muniție

Forms

muniție f (plural muniții)^[1] An older variant munițiune follows the Latin stem: Barițiu writes of „cară de munițiuni” “ammunition wagons”.^[2][3] Regional forms include moniție, as in a folk text quoted by the DLR, „cu monițiia la schinare” “with the ammunition on the back”, and munâție with the plural munâțiuri.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Munition, borrowed from Latin mūnītiō, borrowed from French munition: DEX, MDA2 and the DLR give all three, an etymology of several sources.^[4][3][2] Tiktin names German and French, Wiktionary French or German.^[5][1] Ciorănescu derives it from French and takes the variant amuniție from Russian.^[6]

The Latin noun meant “fortifying; a fortification”; it is formed mūniō (“to fortify, to defend with a wall”) with the suffix -tiō.^[7][1] French took it from Latin, and German took it from Middle French in the 16th century, when it meant all that was needed to wage war, provisions included.^[8][9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is of 1782.^[5] The DLR's earliest quotation is from Gheorghe Șincai's chronicle, where a prince leaves behind „3 tunuri, multe steaguri, multă muniție și multă zăhărea” “3 cannon, many flags, much munition and many provisions”.^[2] MDA2 dates this record by the 1853 edition of the chronicle.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word first had the broad sense of its sources: Negulici defined it in 1848 as the provisions of everything an army needs in a war.^[10] Costinescu still gave this sense in 1870, with the phrases pâine de muniție “army bread” and pușcă de muniție “service rifle”, and Ciorănescu glosses the plural as “provisions”.^[11][6] German and French narrowed the meaning in the same way, from war supplies to the charges for firearms.^[8]

Quotations of 1829 and 1830 already list muniții beside cannon and war materials.^[2] Today the word names cartridges, grenades, shells and bombs, the charges of all firearms; in popular use it can also mean weapons in general.^[4][3]

Timeline

• 1782 – the first record.^[5]
• 1829 – muniții in a report of a Turkish defeat.^[2]
• 1848 – muniție “provisions of an army” in Negulici's dictionary.^[10]
• 1853 – Șincai's chronicle printed, with the DLR's first quotation.^[3][2]
• 1870 – pâine de muniție and pușcă de muniție in Costinescu's dictionary.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. ammunition: a general name for the cartridges of infantry weapons, grenades, shells and aircraft bombs.^[4][12]
2. Projectiles and their accessories used in firearms, mostly in the plural: un depozit de muniții “an ammunition depot”.^[3][2]
3. (popular) armament, weapons.^[3][2]

Related words

• German Munition
• Latin mūnītiō

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. muniție
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 77
4. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 682
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. muniție
6. ^ a b 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. muniție
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. mūnītiō
8. ^ a b Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
9. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
10. ^ a b Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București
11. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci
12. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria, p. s.v. muniție