listă

Forms

listă f (plural liste)^[1] A regional Moldavian form is listră.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French liste, with Italian lista as a second model; the DEX and the Wiktionary name French alone, while MDA2 and the DLR give both.^[4][5][3][1] The DA and Tiktin also compare German Liste, and Scriban adds the Germanic word behind them all.^[2][6][7] The French word was taken in the 16th century from the Italian one, which first meant “border, strip” and comes from a Germanic word continued by German Leiste (“strip, edge”).^[8]

The word is unrelated to an older homograph meaning “leaf (of a book)”, taken from Old Church Slavonic листъ (listŭ) and recorded from 1632.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DLR's first quotations come from Bucharest papers of the early 1830s: in 1831 the Curierul Românesc reported on a list of 49 foreign doctors who had come to Berlin to study the cholera, and a document of 1833 refers to an attached list of goods.^[3] MDA2 dates the word from Heliade Rădulescu's translations from Byron (1834).^[5]

Semantic evolution

The modern sense, a written series of names, objects or data, has not changed since the first records, but set phrases grew around it: listă civilă “civil list”, the sum the state grants a monarch or head of state for personal expenses, recorded in the Uricariul, listă electorală “electoral roll”, and listă de bucate “menu”, common in 20th-century prose.^[3][2][4] Listă neagră “blacklist” names people or bodies marked for some penalty.^[5] The word also came to mean any spoken enumeration, and in computing a printed listing of processed data.^[3][9] In criminal slang listă means a criminal record.^[10]

Timeline

• 1831 – o listă de 49 doctori “a list of 49 doctors” in the Curierul Românesc, the first record of the modern word.^[3]
• 1834 – in Heliade Rădulescu's Byron translations.^[5][3]
• 1854 – in Barițiu, the record Tiktin dates the word by.^[6]
• 1870 – Costinescu's dictionary has listă civilă.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A list: a sheet or document with a series of names, objects or data, and such a series itself: lista invitaților “the guest list”.^[4][5][1]
2. listă de bucate or listă de mâncare: a menu in a restaurant.^[4][12]
3. listă civilă: the civil list, the yearly sum a monarch or head of state may spend from public funds on personal needs.^[4][5]
4. (figurative) a spoken enumeration.^[4][3]
5. (slang) a criminal record.^[10]

Related words

• French liste
• Italian lista

Usage notes

The DLR has two other words spelled listă: a white stripe down a horse's face, also from liste, and a variant of list.^[3] Tiktin's older listă “leaf” (1632) is obsolete.^[6]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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. listă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. listă
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 596
5. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1379
6. ^ 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. lístă
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 751
8. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
9. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. listă
10. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. listă
11. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 42
12. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 770