fugar

Forms

fugar m (plural fugari)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian fugi + -ar, with the adjectival suffix.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The DLRM and NODEX take the noun fugă as its base instead.^[6][7] The verb continues Latin fugiō (“to flee”).^[1][8] A parallel formation exists south of the Danube: Aromanian fugar.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first date is 1645, in the Romanian translation of Herodotus, with the sense “fleeing”.^[5] In the Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 1660s it glosses Slavonic words for a runaway and a refugee.^[9] MDA2's first record is Neculce's chronicle (c. 1743), where the houses of the fugitives are searched „după cum este obiceiul celui fugar a ascunde” “as it is the way of a fugitive to hide things”.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

The adjective, often used as a noun, names a person who has fled: from his country, from home, from the army, from a husband; so it came to mean a deserter, a refugee or an escaped prisoner.^[3][4] Old texts also used it of things that pass: „bogăția este slugă rea și fugare” “wealth is a bad and fleeting servant”.^[5]

Of horses it meant “swift”, and as a masculine noun it became a poetic word for a horse, a steed, in Alecsandri and Coșbuc.^[3][10] The DA notes that modern literary use took it up to render the neologism fugitiv, in the sense “fleeting”, as in Iorga and Sadoveanu.^[3] In zoology it names the ptarmigan, and regionally a fish, the bleak.^[3][4]

Timeline

• 1645 – “fleeing” in the Romanian translation of Herodotus, the first record.^[5]
• c. 1660–1670 – a gloss of Slavonic “runaway, refugee”.^[9]
• 1688 – fugari in the Bucharest Bible (Wisdom 19:3).^[11]
• c. 1743 – “fugitive” in Neculce's chronicle.^[4][3]
• 1870 – “deserter” and “turncoat” in Costinescu's dictionary.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (Of a person or animal) that has fled from a place, often in secret, to escape a danger, constraint or hardship; also as a noun: a fugitive, dezertor, evadat.^[2]
2. Fleeting, passing quickly; fugitiv, trecător;^[2][13] (of a look) cursory.^[2][13]
3. (Of horses) swift, fugaci.^[2]

Noun

1. (poetic) A steed, a horse.^[2][3]

Related words

• fugi
• fugă
• fugaci
• fugitiv
• Aromanian fugar

References

1. ^ a b c d 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. 417
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. fugar
4. ^ 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, 949
5. ^ 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. fugar
6. ^ Academia Republicii Populare Romîne (1958), Dicționarul limbii romîne moderne, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. fugar
7. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. fugar
8. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 103
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. fugar
10. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 261
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Wisdom 19:3
12. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 1, 461
13. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 337