mobilă

Forms

mobilă f (plural mobile)^[1] An old plural mobili occurs in the first record, Mumuleanu's Caracteruri of 1825: „Tot cu mobili englezești” “all with English furniture”.^[2][3] A rare neuter mobil is found in Negruzzi: „După un mobil, după o tapiserie” “behind a piece of furniture, behind a tapestry”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French meuble, with Italian mobilia and German Möbel as further models: DEX, MDA2, the DLR and Tiktin name the three languages together.^[4][3][2][5] The neologism dictionaries compare mobile and the French word, and MDN adds the German word.^[6][7] Gabinschi calls it a European loanword of French origin, which Romanian received along with German and Russian, perhaps with Italian influence.^[8]

Graur found none of these explanations satisfying, since they say nothing of the Romanian ending and gender: the French and Italian words the dictionaries point to are masculine.^[9] The Russian and Bulgarian words are feminine, but their form, Russian мебель (mebelʹ) and Bulgarian мебел (mebel), does not fit.^[9] He proposed a Modern Greek route instead: from the Italian masculine came the Greek neuter Modern Greek μόμπιλο (móbilo), used mostly in the plural μόμπιλα (móbila), which could have given Romanian first the plural and then the singular.^[9] He also noted that CADE derived the noun from the Romanian adjective mobil without explaining the different stress.^[9]

All three source words go back to mōbilis (“movable”).^[10][11][12] In Latin law the adjective was used of movable goods, and its neuter Late Latin mōbile, plural mōbilia, became a noun.^[10][1] The French word continued it.^[10][1] The Italian word is from Medieval Latin mōbilia (“movable goods”), a neuter plural reinterpreted as a feminine singular.^[12] The German word is itself borrowed from French.^[11][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Paris Mumuleanu's verse Caracteruri of 1825, in the plural: „Spun că-l vor împodobi Tot cu mobili englezești” “they say they will furnish it all with English furniture”.^[2][3][5]

Semantic evolution

The word was first used mostly in the plural, for the separate pieces of furniture of a house, as it still is.^[2][4] The singular has also taken a collective sense, “furniture” as a whole, and Graur observed that this singular was gaining ground on the plural.^[4][9] Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 already gives both the singular and the plural mobile “the things needed to furnish a house”.^[14] In heraldry the word also names any figure placed on a coat of arms or a shield.^[7]

Romanian formed the verb mobila “to furnish”, recorded by Pontbriant in 1862.^[15] The rare noun mobilament “furniture”, used by Slavici, is French ameublement remade after mobilă.^[16]

Timeline

• 1825 – mobili “pieces of furniture” in Mumuleanu's Caracteruri, the first record.^[2][3][5]
• 1862 – the verb mobila “to furnish” in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[15]
• 1870 – mobilă and the plural mobile in Costinescu's dictionary.^[14]
• 1975 – Graur proposes the Modern Greek route for the word's form.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. A piece of furniture (mostly in the plural): a table, chair, bed or cupboard used to fit out a home or an office: Și-au cumpărat mobile noi pentru sufragerie.^[4][3]
2. (collective, singular) Furniture as a whole, the furnishings of a room: mobila din dormitor.^[4][17]
3. (heraldry) Any charge placed on a coat of arms or a shield.^[7]

Word family

• mobila
• mobilament

Related words

• mobil
• mobilier
• French meuble
• Latin mobilis

References

1. ^ a b c 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. mobilă
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 35
4. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 664
5. ^ 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. mobilă
6. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. mobilă
7. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. mobilă
8. ^ Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 130
9. ^ a b c d e f Graur, Alexandru (1975), Alte etimologii românești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. mobilă
10. ^ a b c Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
11. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
12. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
13. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
14. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 107
15. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 443
16. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. mobilament
17. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. mobilă