marți

Forms

marți f (plural marți)^[1] Regional and old forms include marțe and marță; a document of 1675 has „sărbătorile drăcești, marțe și miercure” “the devilish holidays, Tuesday and Wednesday”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin Mārtis (“of Mars”), the genitive of Mārs in the phrase diēs Mārtis (“day of Mars”), with the word for “day” left out.^[4][5][6][1] The Latin name of the day is formed from diēs (“day”) and the genitive of the god's name.^[1]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian marți and Megleno-Romanian marț.^[4][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian martedì, Occitan dimartz, French mardi, Catalan dimars and Spanish martes, and it has a match in Albanian martë.^[4][9][10] Spanish, Sardinian and Romanian keep the bare genitive, while French and Italian put it before the word for “day” and Catalan and Occitan after it.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is a liturgical note in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), „sf[îr]ș[itul] marți” “the end of Tuesday”, already naming the second day of the week.^[2][5] Tiktin also dates the word to this 16th-century manuscript.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has stayed “Tuesday”.^[6][2] Used without an article as an adverb the word means “on Tuesday”, and the articled marțea means “on Tuesdays, every Tuesday”.^[6][5]

Folk belief held Tuesday to be an unlucky day for starting anything, which survives in sayings such as toate pe dos și nunta marțea “everything backwards, and the wedding on a Tuesday” and parcă e făcut marțea “as if he were made on a Tuesday”, said of an unlucky person.^[3][5] Several folk holidays are named after particular Tuesdays: marțea ciorilor in the week before Lent, marțea vaselor in the first week of Lent and marțea morților after Easter.^[2][5] DER names the folk figure Marțolea, a phantom said to appear in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, and cow names such as Mărțica for a calf born on a Tuesday.^[4] The word was borrowed by Romani: martǐ.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – marți “Tuesday” in a note of the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[5][2]
• 1675 – the form marțe in a list of holidays that a document condemns as devilish.^[2]
• 1825 – marți in the Lexicon de la Buda, glossed with Latin dies martis.^[12]
• 1829 – marța “on Tuesdays” among the days of the week on which assemblies were held.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Tuesday: the second day of the week, after luni.^[6][1]
2. (popular) In names of folk holidays: marțea ciorilor, the Tuesday of the week before Lent;^[5] marțea morților, a Tuesday after Easter when the dead are remembered.^[5][2]

Adverb

1. On Tuesday: on the Tuesday just past or the coming one, or on some Tuesday: Ne vedem marți.^[6]
2. In the form marțea: every Tuesday, on Tuesdays: Marțea merge la piață.^[6][5]

Related words

• Marte
• martie
• Aromanian marți
• Latin Mārs

Usage notes

MDA2 and DEX list a second marți, a neuter noun that is only a variant of marț “March cord”; it is a separate word and is not treated here.^[5][6]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. marți
3. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. marți
4. ^ a b c d 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. marți
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 1, 1437
6. ^ 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. 621
7. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 114
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 184
9. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 89
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5382
11. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ 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. 378