inițială

Forms

inițială f (plural inițiale)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French initiale (“initial letter”), the French noun use of the adjective initial.^[1][2] In French the noun is short for lettre initiale.^[1] Marcu and Maneca compare Italian iniziale as well.^[3]

DEX 2009 and MDA2 treat the word as the feminine noun of the adjective inițial, which DEX takes from French and MDA2 from French and Latin initiālis.^[4][5] Wikționar also derives it from the adjective.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 gives the first record from Mihai Eminescu's Nuvele, where the sense is already “initial letter of a word”: the initials of an old book printed in Cyrillic letters were written strangely.^[5][7]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is the letter that begins a word.^[7][4] Șăineanu's dictionary of 1929 already gives the use with names: to sign with one's initials.^[8] From there the word came to mean, mostly in the plural, the abbreviation of a person's first name and surname.^[4][2] In printing MDA2 adds the senses “capital letter” and “text set in capitals”.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. An initial: the letter or sound with which a word begins.^[4][3]
2. Mostly in the plural: the first letters of a person's first name and surname, written with a full stop, as an abbreviation: Și-a scris inițialele pe copertă.^[4][2]
3. (printing) A capital letter; a text set in capitals.^[5]

Related words

• inițial
• French initiale

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. inițială
3. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. inițială
4. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 509
5. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1139
6. ^ Wikționar (Romanian Wiktionary), ro.wiktionary.org
7. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 520
8. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 328