lungime

Forms

lungime f (plural lungimi)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian lung + -ime.^[2][3][4][5] Ciorănescu lists it among the derivatives of the adjective and finds Meyer's Latin *longimen unnecessary.^[6] Wiktionary also prefers the Romanian derivation.^[1] The adjective is from Latin longus (“long”).^[7][6] The Aromanian counterpart is lundzimi.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is Coresi's Carte de învățătură (1581).^[4] It occurs in the 1589 Coresi psalter at Psalm 20:4, and the 1649 lexicon of Mardarie glosses Slavonic words for extent and distance with it.^[9][10] Tiktin's earliest is a text of about 1620.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The old texts use it both for extent in space and for duration: Dosoftei renders the psalm verse “holiness becomes thy house, O Lord, for ever” as „în lungime de zile” “in length of days”, and Cantemir writes of the length of a tail.^[5] The Bucharest Bible of 1688 has lungimea in the measurements of buildings, from the ark in Genesis 6:15 on.^[11] In physics the word became the name of a fundamental quantity, with the term lungime de undă “wavelength”, and in computing lungimea cuvântului “word length”.^[2][4] CADE (1931) also records a legal sense, the delays of a procedure.^[12]

In Oltenia lungime is a long beam laid on top of the walls of a house, and the plural lungimuri the horizontal beams forming the base of a wooden house.^[13]

Timeline

• 1581 – in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[4]
• 1589 – in Coresi's psalter, Psalm 20:4.^[9]
• c. 1620 – Tiktin's first record.^[5]
• 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[10]
• 1688 – lungimea in the Bucharest Bible, Genesis 6:15.^[11]
• 1801 – glossed with Latin longitudo in Klein's dictionary.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. length: the fundamental physical quantity of spatial extent; the distance between two points; the greatest dimension of a body or of a rectangular surface: o masă de doi metri lungime “a table two metres long”.^[2][4]
2. lungime de undă: wavelength.^[2]
3. duration, the time something lasts; a long stretch of time: lungimea serilor de iarnă “the length of winter evenings”.^[2][15]
4. (computing) lungimea cuvântului: the number of bits in a word.^[2]
5. (regional, Oltenia) A long beam laid on the walls of a house.^[13]

Related words

• lung
• Aromanian lundzimi

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 605
3. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. lungime
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1406
5. ^ 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. lungime
6. ^ a b 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. lung
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5119
8. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 603
9. ^ 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 20:4
10. ^ a b 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. lungime
11. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 6:15
12. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. lungime
13. ^ a b Cazacu, Boris (coord.) et al. (1967), Glosar dialectal. Oltenia, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. 61
14. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 392
15. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 2, 796