martor

Forms

martor m (plural martori, feminine equivalent martoră)^[1] The older form martur, still used in popular speech, occurs in Varlaam's homilies: „lui Hristos curse Ioan martur pocăinței” “John ran before Christ, a witness of repentance”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin martyr (“witness; martyr”), or its Vulgar Latin form martur, which the Latin inscriptions show.^{[4][5][6][2][1]} Latin had the word from Ancient Greek μάρτυρ (mártur), a later form of μάρτυς (mártus, “witness”).^[4][1] Tiktin takes it as an old loan, since Greek /y/ gave Romanian /u/, later /o/, as in preot from presbyter.^[5] Ciorănescu traces it directly to the Greek word through Vulgar Latin, and Wiktionary also allows a direct borrowing from Greek.^[4][1]

Ciorănescu compares Albanian martür, Old Italian martore and Sardinian màrturu (“invalid”).^[4][7] The learned martir “martyr” is a doublet: it came from Modern Greek μάρτυρ (mártyr) in the 18th century; compare Aromanian martir and Megleno-Romanian martir.^[4][8] The Greek word itself is of disputed origin: it is often traced to Proto-Indo-European *(s)mer- (“to remember, care for”), but Beekes doubts this and considers a Pre-Greek origin.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1418, from the Romanian words found in the Slavonic charters of Wallachia and Moldavia.^[5] In a Romanian text it appears in the Codicele Voronețean of about 1563–1583, in Acts 22:15, with the sense “one who bears witness to the Christian faith”: „să fii marrtoru lui cătră toți oamenii” “that you shall be his witness to all men”.^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

The old texts use the word for a witness to the faith and, by extension, for a martyr of the Church, a sense later taken over by mucenic and the Greek loan martir.^[6][2][4] The ordinary sense, a person who saw or heard something and can tell how it happened, is attested in the 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons, where martor and martur gloss the Slavonic word for “witness”.^[9][6]

The legal sense of a person called before a court or required to sign a document grew from it, and the word came to mean the second in a duel.^[3][6] The technical senses, a reference sample in laboratory experiments and the martor de eroziune, a residual hill left by erosion, are modern.^[3] Regionally the word also meant a guarantor.^[6] In Oltenia it names a wooden slide down which logs are sent.^[10]

Timeline

• 1418 – the first record, in a Slavo-Romanian charter.^[5]
• c. 1563–1583 – marrtoru “witness to the faith” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[6][2]
• c. 1573–1578 – martorul in the Psaltirea Scheiană (Psalm 88:36).^[11]
• 1660 – martor glossing Slavonic “witness” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[9]
• 1688 – martur nine times and martor once in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]
• 18th century – the doublet martir “martyr” from Modern Greek.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A witness: a person who is or was present at an event, a conversation or an incident, and can tell how it happened.^[3] Dumnezeu mi-e martor! “God is my witness!” is said when swearing to tell the truth.^[3][6]
2. A person called to testify before a court or another inquiry about a fact they know directly; also a person whom the law requires to attend the drawing up of a document and to sign it to make it valid.^[3][6]
3. Each of the seconds of two people about to fight a duel;^[3][6] a trimite cuiva martori is to challenge someone to a duel.^[3][6]
4. A reference sample used in laboratory experiments, a control.^[3]
5. martor de eroziune: a hill left standing as the remnant of an old surface worn away by erosion.^[3]
6. (obsolete) A follower of the Christian faith; by extension, a martyr of the Church.^[6][2]
7. (regional) A guarantor.^[6]
8. A warning light on a car's dashboard, a telltale.^[1]

Related words

• martir
• mărturisi
• mărturie
• Latin martyr

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. martor
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 621
4. ^ a b c d e f g 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. martor
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. martor
6. ^ 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, 1437
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5385
8. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 184
9. ^ 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. martor
10. ^ Cazacu, Boris (coord.) et al. (1967), Glosar dialectal. Oltenia, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. 62
11. ^ 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 88:36
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 31:44