fiecare

Forms

fiecare (genitive-dative masculine fiecăruia, feminine fiecăreia)^[2]

Etymology

It is a compound from Romanian fie + care, the present subjunctive of fi “to be” and the pronoun “which”, so that the word means “whichever it be”.^[3][4][2][1] Ciorănescu compares Italian qualsisia “whichever” for the use of the subjunctive.^[5] care is inherited from Latin quālis (“of what kind”).^[6]

The old variants fieșcare and fieștecare contain a further element ⟨-și-⟩ or ⟨-ște-⟩.^[4][3] Tiktin reads ⟨fiește-⟩ either as ⟨fie-și-ce⟩, compare niște, or as ⟨fie-și-te⟩ with an obscure ⟨te⟩.^[4] DELR takes the shorter variant as ⟨fie⟩ + și + ⟨care⟩, or as an inversion of ⟨fiecareși⟩.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

DELR and Tiktin date the first record to 1570, in Coresi's Liturghier.^[3][4] MDA2's first record is a manuscript of 1618.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The meaning “each, every” has not changed; the word is used both as a pronoun (fiecare știe “everyone knows”) and before a noun (fiecare om).^[2][7] The old language preferred the longer forms: fieșcare is recorded from 1632 and fieștecare from 1678, the Bible of 1688 has fieștecare about thirty times, and Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 already has it.^[3][8][9] DEX still lists fieșcare, fieștecare and fiștecare as old and popular variants.^[2]

Timeline

• 1570 – fiecare in Coresi's Liturghier, the first record.^[3][4]
• 1618 – in a manuscript printed in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[7]
• 1618 – the inflected form fiecareleși.^[3]
• 1632 – fieșcare.^[3]
• 1649 – fieștecare in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[9]
• 1678 – DELR's first date for fieștecare.^[3]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. each one, everyone: one and another of a group, taken separately: Fiecare are dreptatea lui.^[2][7]

Determiner

1. every, each: fiecare zi.^[2][7]

Related words

• fie
• care
• oricare

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 392
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2011–), Dicționarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR), vol. I: A–B (2011), vol. II: C (2015–2018), București: Editura Academiei Române; continued online at delr.lingv.ro, p. s.v. care
4. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. fiecare
5. ^ 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. fi
6. ^ 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. care
7. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 901
8. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Exodus 36:10
9. ^ a b Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. fieștecare