lingoare

Forms

lingoare f (plural lingori)^[1] The old texts write lângoare: the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki has „Că scăzu în lângoare viața mea” “for my life is spent with sickness”.^[2][3] The variant lungoare is common from the 17th century: Miron Costin writes „Nu era ciuma, ci direaptă lungoare” “it was not the plague but true typhoid”.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin languor (“faintness, weariness”), continued through its accusative languōrem.^{[5][3][6][7][1]} The Latin noun is formed on langueō (“to be faint, weary”) with the suffix -or.^[8][1] Ciorănescu, after Rosetti, notes that among the Romance languages only Romanian kept the word.^[5]

It survives south of the Danube: Aromanian lãngoari, also lungoare, and Megleno-Romanian lăngoare.^[5][9] The old form is lângoare.^[6][5] Ciorănescu explains the vowel of the modern form and of lungoare by crossing with linge or with lung (“long”), and the DLR calls the variant with /u/ a popular etymology.^[5][2] The Maramureș dictionary of Ștef adds that the influence of lung fits a long illness.^[10] For the sense “languishing”, Tiktin and the DLR compare French langueur.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, where lângoare means “sickness, suffering”.^[3][11][2] The same sense is in the Codicele Voronețean and in Coresi's psalter: „Domnul ajută în patul lângoriei lui” “the Lord helps him on his sickbed”.^[2][6][12]

Semantic evolution

In the old religious texts the word is the general name for illness and pain, and figuratively the sickness of sin.^[2][3] From the 17th century the chronicles use it for a severe fever, the typhus or typhoid of the doctors: Miron Costin calls it „direaptă lungoare”, and Dosoftei speaks of „friguri cu lângoare”, fevers with typhoid.^[2][6] That became the main modern sense, “typhoid fever”, labelled old and popular by DEX.^[7][3]

Ciorănescu points to Șăineanu's semantics for the shift from “weakness” to a named disease.^[5] In the popular language the word also names a wretched, lazy or feeble person, and plants: floare-de-lingoare for yellow loosestrife.^[3][6] A literary sense “languor, longing” in the 19th century follows French langueur (Negruzzi's „lângori amoroase”).^[6]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – lângoare “sickness” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[3][11]
• c. 1551–1558 – the plural lângori in the Psaltirea Voroneț.^[13]
• 1570 – lângoarea in Coresi's psalter.^[12][6]
• 17th century – lungoare for typhoid fever in Miron Costin.^[2]
• 1790 – lungoare in a document published by Iorga.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. (dated, popular) typhoid fever; regionally also other severe infectious fevers such as typhus.^[7][3][14]
2. (obsolete) illness, suffering, pain.^[3][2][1]
3. (popular) a wretched, lazy or feeble person.^[3]
4. (popular) listlessness, apathy, melancholy.^[3]
5. (regional, botany) in floare-de-lingoare and iarbă-de-lingoare: yellow loosestrife, Lysimachia vulgaris.^[3][6]

Related words

• lânced
• Aromanian lãngoari
• Latin languor

Usage notes

Parcă e sculat după lingoare “as if he had just got up from typhoid” is said of a very thin, pale man.^[3][6] DEX gives lungoare and lângoare as variants.^[7]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. lingoare
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1371
4. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 763
5. ^ a b c d e f 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. lângoare
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. lingoare
7. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 593
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 579
10. ^ Ștef, Dorin (2021), Dicționar de regionalisme și arhaisme din județul Maramureș, 3rd ed., Baia Mare, p. s.v. lingoare
11. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 9:29
12. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 40:3
13. ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 89:11
14. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. lingoare