instrucțiune

Forms

instrucțiune f (plural instrucțiuni)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French instruction, with Latin īnstrūctiō (genitive instructiōnis) as a second model, one of the many abstract nouns of the 19th-century neologisms.^[2][3][4] Some dictionaries name the French word alone.^[5][6][1] Scriban derived it from Latin only, and compared construcțiune and distrucțiune.^[7] The French noun is a learned borrowing from the Latin word.^[1] The Latin noun meant “building” and, as a military term, “the drawing up of troops”; it was formed from instruō (“to build, to draw up”) with the suffix -tiō.^[8][1] That verb is in- added to struō (“to pile up, arrange”).^[1]

Beside it Romanian has the shorter instrucție, from the same French word.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record in our sources is in Barițiu's Hungarian–Romanian dictionary of 1869, which gives instrucţiune as the Romanian for Hungarian utasítás (“instruction, direction”), next to indireptariu.^[9] It also renders a set of rules, a regulation and teaching, schooling there.^[10][11] MDA2 cites it from Convorbiri literare.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In the late 19th and early 20th century the word had the wide range of French instruction: teaching and education (instrucțiune publică “public education”), the knowledge someone has acquired, the drilling of soldiers, and the investigation of a case before a court.^[12][7][13] A regional document of 1888 complains that the people did not care for instrucțiunea, “schooling”.^[14]

Most of these senses later passed to the doublet instrucție;^[2][3] instrucțiune was left with “direction, order”, mostly in the plural instrucțiuni “instructions”, the directions issued by a higher authority and the leaflet that contains them.^[2][3] With computers it gained the sense of a single command in a program.^[5][3]

Timeline

• 1869 – instrucţiune “direction; regulation; teaching” in Barițiu's dictionary.^[9]
• 1888 – “schooling” in a document from Maramureș.^[14]
• 1929 – Șăineanu lists teaching, education, knowledge, lessons and orders among its senses.^[12]
• 1931 – military drill and the investigation of a case at law, in CADE.^[13]
• 1986 – the computing sense, “a statement of a program”.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. An instruction or direction given to someone on how to carry out a task.^[2][3]
2. (dated) Teaching, schooling; the same as instrucție.^[2][3]
3. (in the plural) The directions a higher authority issues to the bodies under it; also the text or leaflet with such directions, such as the instructions for use of a device: Citește instrucțiunile înainte de a porni aparatul.^[2][6]
4. (computing) A statement of a computer program, naming the operation to be carried out.^[3][4]

Related words

• instrucție
• instrui
• instructiv
• instructor
• construcție

Usage notes

The word is mostly used in the plural, instrucțiuni.^[15][6] Its doublet instrucție now carries the senses “education”, “military training” and “criminal investigation” (judecător de instrucție “examining magistrate”); Tiktin dates instrucție to 1656 and gives instrucțiune as a variant of it.^[2][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 512
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, 1144
4. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. instrucțiune
5. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. instrucțiune
6. ^ 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. instrucțiune
7. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 647
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. instructio
9. ^ a b Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 597
10. ^ Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 499
11. ^ Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 548
12. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 332
13. ^ a b Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. instrucțiune
14. ^ a b Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. instrucțiúne
15. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 526
16. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. instrúcție