lunatic

Forms

lunatic m or n (feminine singular lunatică, masculine plural lunatici, feminine/neuter plural lunatice)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin lūnāticus (“moonstruck, epileptic”), and in its modern senses also borrowed from French lunatique.^[2][3][4][5] The neologism dictionaries add Italian lunatico.^[6] Tiktin thinks the word probably came through Church Slavonic, which had also taken the Latin word.^[7][8] Wiktionary instead treats the senses “sleepwalker” and “born in the same month” as inherited from Latin and the senses “seeing visions, bizarre” as borrowed from French and Italian.^[1]

The Latin adjective is formed on lūna (“moon”) with the suffix -āticus;^[9] Scriban explains it by the old belief that moonlight affects the mind.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is a Gospel text of 1551–1553, at Matthew 4:24, where the sick brought to Jesus include the possessed and the moonstruck.^[7] The New Testament of 1648 has lunatec: „Doamne, fie-ți milă de fiiul mieu, că e lunatec și rău pate” “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is moonstruck and suffers badly”.^[4][3]

Semantic evolution

In the old texts the word meant “moonstruck”: epileptic, or out of one's mind, and boală lunatică was epilepsy.^[4][3] Later it came to mean a sleepwalker, and in the 19th century, in Alecsandri and Eminescu, also someone who sees visions or is easily frightened, then anything unreal, fantastic or bizarre.^[4][10]

A popular sense is “born in the same month as another”: folk custom held that a girl and a boy born in the same month should not marry.^[7][2] The western form lunatec is the older spelling;^[8] Scriban gives lunatic as the eastern form.^[8][4]

Timeline

• 1551–1553 – a Gospel text at Matthew 4:24, the first record.^[7]
• 1648 – lunatec in the New Testament of Bălgrad.^[4][3]
• 1649 – lunatec in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – lunatec in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda glosses lunaticu with Latin lunaticus and German mondsüchtig.^[13]
• 1893–1895 – Damé gives the sense “born in the same month”.^[14]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (of people, often as a noun) Sleepwalking; a sleepwalker, somnambulist;^[1] (of sleep, a look, a walk) like a sleepwalker's.^[2][1]
2. (rare) Seeing visions; easily frightened, fearful.^[2]
3. (rare) Fantastic, unreal, hallucinatory; full of odd ideas, bizarre in behaviour.^[2][1]
4. (popular) Born in the same month as another person.^[2][1]

Related words

• lună
• Latin lūnāticus

Usage notes

The variant lunatec is common in the old texts and in Transylvania.^[2][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 605
3. ^ 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, 1404
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. lunatic
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. lunatic
6. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. lunatic
7. ^ 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. lunatic
8. ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 760
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 794
11. ^ 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. lunatec
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Mt 17:15
13. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 363
14. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. lunatic