mormânt

Forms

mormânt n (plural morminte)^[1] An old and colloquial plural is mormânturi: „Va face să vorbească morții din mormînturi” “he will make the dead speak from their graves” (1776).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin monumentum (“memorial, monument; tomb”), or its variant monimentum.^{[4][3][5][1][6]} The Latin noun is formed on moneō (“to remind”) with the suffix -mentum.^[7][1] The /r/ is explained by dissimilation, perhaps helped by the verb muri “to die”; Sardinian morimentu and Occitan morimen have the same /r/.^[4] Wiktionary puts it down to the rhotacism of some Old Romanian dialects.^[1]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian murmintu and Megleno-Romanian murmint.^[4][8][9] monument, borrowed from French, is its doublet.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, already meaning “grave”: „cei ce-l mâniia și lăcuiia în morminte” “those who provoked him and dwelt in tombs”.^[5][2] The same psalter has mormînt at Psalm 87:12.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The sense has stayed close to “grave”, and spread to any burial place and to a funeral monument or vault.^[3][5] Since the grave stands for death, many phrases use it: a duce pe cineva la mormânt “to cause someone's death”, a intra în mormânt “to die”, liniște de mormânt “deathly silence”.^[3][5] Figuratively it is also death itself and a dark, sad place.^[11][12] Regionally the plural means a cemetery.^[5]

The old texts show variant forms: murmintele in a text of 1600 and mormănturile in the Romanian Herodotus of 1645.^[2] Oltenia has the masculine plural morminți.^[12]

Timeline

• early 16th century – morminte “tombs” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki.^[5][2]
• 1570 – mormînt in Coresi's psalter (Psalm 5:11).^[13]
• 1581 – „Morții den morminte se vor scula” “the dead shall rise from the graves” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[2]
• 1600 – the variant murmintele.^[2]
• 1688 – in the Bucharest Bible, at Genesis 23:4.^[14]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary glosses mormânt with Latin monumentum, sepulcrum.^[15]

Meanings

Noun

1. A grave: a pit dug in the ground to bury the dead; a place where someone is buried.^[3][5][1]
2. A funeral monument; a tomb, a vault.^[3][5]
3. (figurative) Death: credincios până la mormânt “faithful unto death”.^[11][5]
4. (regional, in the plural) A cemetery.^[5]

Word family

• înmormânta
• înmormântare
• mormântal

Related words

• monument
• Aromanian murmintu
• Latin monumentum

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. mormânt
3. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 674
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. mormânt
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. 2, 57
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 5672
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ 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, 122
9. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 683
10. ^ 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 87:12
11. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 409
12. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 833
13. ^ 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 5:11
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 23:4
15. ^ 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. 401