februarie

Forms

februarie m (uncountable)^[1] The older form was fevruarie, with the colloquial fevruar and februar beside it: „Când bufnița prin lunca / Februar' va cânta…” “When the owl sings in the grove in February…”.^[2] Tiktin lists fevruarie, fevrar and fevruar as old forms of the word.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin februārius (“of February”), the Latin name of the month, a learned borrowing of the 19th century.^{[4][5][6][7][1]} The Latin adjective is formed on Februa, the festival of purification held in the month, with the suffix -ārius.^[8][9]

The Latin form replaced the older fevruarie, which came from the same Latin word through Slavonic and Greek.^[1][4] DER takes the older form from Slavonic февроуарий (fevrouarij), recorded in the 16th century, and the DA from Middle Bulgarian.^[4][2] Gabinschi traces the Slavonic word to Byzantine Greek Φεβρουάριος (Phebrouários) and that to Latin, and explains the ⟨b⟩ of the modern form by Latin or other western influence.^[10] Tiktin also gives the Byzantine Greek word as the source.^[3]

The Latin word was inherited as well, as the folk names of the month făurar and faur.^[1][11][10] Its Romance descendants include Italian febbraio, French février, Catalan febrer, Spanish febrero and Portuguese fevereiro.^[11][12] South of the Danube, Aromanian flivar comes from a variant of Modern Greek φλεβάρις (fleváris).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the month name to a document of 1503, under a headword that also covers the older fevruarie.^[3] The Latin form Februarie is the headword of the Lexicon de la Buda (1825), glossed with Latin mensis februarius, Hungarian böjt elsö hava and German Hornung, Februar.^[13]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept the one sense, the second month of the year.^[5][6] In the 19th century it competed with fevruarie: Damé (1893) still sends februarie to fevruarie, while Șăineanu (1929) has februarie as the headword and calls fevruarie Slavo-Greek.^[14][15] The DA describes fevruarie as a literary word that reached the people through the church and popular writings and in places replaced the inherited făurar.^[2] Today februarie is the standard form, and faur and făurar are popular names of the month.^[4][5]

Timeline

• 1503 – the month name in a document, under the older forms.^[3]
• 1825 – Februarie in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[13]
• 1870 – Cihac lists februarie and fevruarie beside the inherited faur.^[11]
• 1893 – Damé still treats februarie as a variant of fevruarie.^[14]
• 1929 – Șăineanu has februarie as the headword.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. February, the second month of the year, with 28 days, or 29 in a leap year; popularly also faur or făurar.^[5][16][6]

Related words

• făurar
• faur
• fevruarie
• Latin februārius

Usage notes

The word has three syllables in careful speech (fe-bru-a-rie), and the dictionaries note the pronunciation with /u/ before /a/.^[5][7] The obsolete variant februar is still listed by DEX.^[5]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Academia Română (1913–1949), Dicționarul limbii române (DA), ed. Sextil Pușcariu, tom I (A–B, C, D–De) and tom II (F–I, J–Lojniță), București: Socec / Universul / Monitorul Oficial și Imprimeriile Statului; page scans at cflr-scans.solirom.ro, p. s.v. fevruarie
3. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. februarie
4. ^ a b c d e Ciorănescu, Alexandru (1958–1966), Diccionario etimológico rumano, La Laguna: Universidad de La Laguna (Romanian ed.: Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române, București: Saeculum, 2001), p. s.v. fevruarie
5. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 386
6. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 890
7. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. februarie
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 103
11. ^ a b c Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 90
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
13. ^ a b Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 213
14. ^ a b Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. februarie
15. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 246
16. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. februarie