minunat

Forms

minunat m or n (feminine singular minunată, masculine plural minunați, feminine/neuter plural minunate)^[1] Old forms are mienunat, menunat and mierurat; the Codicele Voronețean has „În mierurata a lui lumiră” “into his marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9).^[2][3][4]

Etymology

Used as an adjective, it is the past participle from Romanian minuna (“to marvel; to amaze”).^[2][5][4][1] The verb is formed from minune “wonder, miracle”.^[5][6]

The origin of the noun is uncertain.^[6] Candrea and Densusianu derived it from Vulgar Latin *miriō, a derivative of Latin mīror (“to wonder at”), a form not confirmed elsewhere in Romanian.^[6][1] Pușcariu took it from mira through an unattested intermediate noun, and Ciorănescu suggests a back-formation from an unattested expressive verb formed on the same verb, of the type of clătina.^[6] The Lexicon of Buda (1825) related the adjective to Latin mīrābilis, a view of its time.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), in the religious sense “wondrous, divine”: „În mierurata a lui lumiră” “into his marvellous light”.^[2][3] Coresi's psalter has it in „Minunat e numele tău prespre tot pământul” “wonderful is your name over all the earth” (Psalm 8), where the Slavonic has čudno.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In the old religious texts it meant “miraculous, holy, divine”, and as a noun minunate “wonders” (Latin mirabilia) and minunat “a worker of miracles”.^[3][2][4] Already in the 17th century it also described things out of the ordinary, as in a text of 1650 about a mosque, „lucru minunat și frumos” “a wonderful and beautiful work”.^[3] From there it came to mean “splendid, delightful” and simply “very good, excellent”.^[5][4] In fairy tales it qualifies things with magic powers, such as Sbiera's pasărea minunată “the enchanted bird”.^[8] The sense “amazed, surprised”, from the reflexive verb, is now rare.^[5][2] Before an adjective with de it works as an intensifier, like minunat de frumos “wonderfully beautiful”.^[9][10]

Timeline

• c. 1563-1583 – mierurat “wondrous” in the Codicele Voronețean.^[2][3]
• 1570 – minunat in Coresi's psalter.^[11]
• 1620 – “out of the ordinary”, of a scroll.^[3]
• 1688 – 38 occurrences in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]
• 1776 – as a noun, “a worker of miracles”.^[3]

Meanings

Adjective

1. wonderful, out of the ordinary; striking with its beauty, splendid; very good, excellent; often used as an adverb: A fost o seară minunată.^[5][2][1]
2. (in fairy tales) Working wonders, endowed with supernatural powers; enchanted.^[5][2]
3. (rare) Amazed, surprised.^[5][2]
4. (obsolete, religious) miraculous, holy; as a noun, a wonder.^[2][3]

Word family

• minunăție

Related words

• minuna
• minune
• mira

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 2, 19
3. ^ 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. minunat
4. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. minunát
5. ^ 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. 657
6. ^ 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. minune
7. ^ 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. 393
8. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. minunat
9. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 86
10. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 811
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 41:4
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Exodus 15:11