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fugă

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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word fugă

fugă1 running, flight

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
1538 a document cited by Tiktin
Inherited from
Latin fuga
Ultimate origin
Latin fuga
Etymology tree of fugă1
inherited borrowed derived
Latin fuga
Italian foga
Romanian fugă
Italian fuga
English fugue
Spanish fuga
From the same root · fugă1
Latin fugāx ← fuga
Latin fugō ← fuga

Pronunciation

Forms

fugă f (plural fugi)[1]

Etymology

The word for running and flight is inherited from Latin fuga (“flight”).[2][3][4][1] It survives in all four branches: Aromanian fugă, Megleno-Romanian fugă and Istro-Romanian fuge.[2][5] Its Romance cognates include Italian fuga, Catalan fuga, Spanish fuga and Portuguese fuga, beside the Italian inherited form foga (“haste, heat”).[2][6] The Latin noun belongs with the verb that gave fugi, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰugéh₂.[7][8][1]

Ciorănescu lists among its derivatives fugar “fugitive”, fugaș and fugos, and takes fugaci “quick at running” for a Romanian formation with -aci, though Candrea–Densusianu and the DA derive it from fugāx.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1538.[9] MDA2's first record is Dosoftei's lives of the saints (1682–1686), where all escaped by flight: „Scăpară toți cu fuga”.[3][10] The first sense was flight from danger.[10]

Semantic evolution

Two senses run side by side from the old texts on: the hasty departure to escape danger (flight, refuge, desertion, the elopement of a girl) and the act of running.[3][10] The running sense gave many adverbial phrases: din fugă “while running; in passing”, pe fugă “hastily”, în fuga calului “at a gallop”, and the bare form fuga! “quick!”.[4][11] O fugă de cal became a measure of distance, as far as a horse runs without stopping.[9][4] The proverb fuga-i rușinoasă, dar e sănătoasă “flight is shameful but healthy” is in Creangă.[10] Mining uses the word for the slope of the props of a gallery frame.[4]

Timeline

  • 1538 – the first record, according to Tiktin.[9]
  • 1660 – fugă glossing Slavonic бѣгство “flight” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.[12]
  • 1682–1686 – scăpară toți cu fuga in Dosoftei's lives of the saints.[3][10]
  • 1801 – a da fuga “to take flight” in Klein's dictionary.[13]

Meanings

Noun

  1. running: moving with long, quick steps; a race: o luă la fugă “he broke into a run”.[4][3][1]
  2. (adverbial, as fuga) Quickly, at once.[4][11]
  3. flight, escape: leaving a place in haste, often secretly, to escape danger or constraint.[4][3]
  4. (mining) The slope of the props of a gallery frame towards its axis.[4]

Word family

  • fugar
  • fugaș
  • fugos
  • fugăreț

fugă2 fugue

Confidence
Established
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1939 Scriban's dictionary
Borrowed from
Italian fuga
Ultimate origin
Latin fuga
Etymology tree of fugă2
inherited borrowed derived
Latin fuga
Italian foga
Italian fuga
English fugue
Romanian fugă
Spanish fuga
The journey of fugă2
From the same root · fugă2
Latin fugāx ← fuga
Latin fugō ← fuga

Pronunciation

Forms

fugă f (plural fugi)[1]

Etymology

The word for the musical form is borrowed from Italian fuga.[4][14][3] The DN also compares French fugue, and Gabinschi calls it a Europeanism of Italian origin, found also in French, German and Russian.[15][16] The Italian word is the ordinary noun for flight, from Latin fuga: the name fits a form in which one voice seems to run away from another.[16][17]

Earliest recorded meaning

Scriban's dictionary of 1939 has it as a musical term, a piece in which the parts follow one another repeating the same subject.[11] MDA2 dates it only from DEX 1975.[3]

Semantic evolution

In Italian the musical sense is recorded from 1581.[17] In Romanian it has kept only this technical sense, and the DLRLC illustrates it with a fugue by Bach.[18]

Timeline

  • 1581 – the musical sense of Italian fuga.[17]
  • 1939 – the Romanian musical term in Scriban's dictionary.[11]
  • 1955–1957 – fugă “fugue” in the DLRLC.[18]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (music) fugue: a polyphonic form for two or more voices in which one, two or three themes are imitated according to the laws of counterpoint.[4][14][1]

Usage notes

The two homographs have the same plural, fugi.[4] Fuga, the articled form of the first, is also used as an adverb meaning “quickly”.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d 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. fugă
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 949
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 417
  5. ^ Saramandu, Nicolae (coord.) et al. (2010–), Dicționarul dialectului meglenoromân, general și etimologic, fascicles in Fonetică și dialectologie XXIX–, p. 181
  6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 3548
  7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ 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. fugi
  9. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. fugă
  10. ^ a b c d e 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. fugă
  11. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 531
  12. ^ 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. fugă
  13. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 363
  14. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. fugă
  15. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. fugă
  16. ^ a b Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 107
  17. ^ a b c Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
  18. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 338

Related etymologies

  • casă · also from Italian
  • la · also from Italian
  • vioară · also from Italian
  • abate · also from Italian
  • arie · also from Italian
  • cameră · also from Italian
  • special · also from Italian
  • conta · also from Italian
Cite this entry

“Fugă.” Etymologically, 11 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/fug%C4%83. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·