navă

Forms

navă f (plural nave)^[1] MDA2 records an old variant nave for the singular.^[2] Scriban gives a plural năvi besides nave.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French nave, a 19th-century loan with two further models, Latin nāvis (“ship”) and Italian nave, as MDA2, the DLR and DEX give it.^[2][4][5] The dictionaries weigh the sources differently: Tiktin names Italian and French, Marcu and Maneca Italian first, Wiktionary all three, and Scriban only Latin.^[6][7][1][3]

The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *néh₂us (“ship”), and is cognate with Ancient Greek ναῦς (naûs) and Sanskrit नौ (nau).^[1][8] The Latin word was also inherited by Romanian as naie “ship”, now archaic or regional, so the two Romanian words are a doublet.^[9][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Ion Heliade Rădulescu's 1847 translation of Byron's Don Juan, where Doña Inez wants her son to go on a long sea voyage: „ca și când o navă spaniolă ar fi fost o altă barcă a lui Noe” “as if a Spanish ship were another Noah's ark”.^[4][2][6]

Semantic evolution

A year later Negulici's dictionary of neologisms glossed it with the native corabie.^[10] Costinescu in 1870 limited it to merchant ships, noting that warships were called vas.^[11]

The architectural sense, the naos or central part of a church, is recorded by Șăineanu in 1929 and by CADE.^[12][13] In the 20th century the word was extended to aircraft and spacecraft, with navă cosmică or navă spațială for a spaceship.^[2][7] Compounds such as navă-bază “mother ship” appear in the press from the 1970s.^[14]

Timeline

• 1847 – first record, in Heliade Rădulescu's translation of Don Juan.^[2][4]
• 1848 – in Negulici's dictionary, glossed “ship”.^[10]
• 1870 – Costinescu defines it as a merchant ship.^[11]
• 1929 – the sense “nave of a church” in Șăineanu's dictionary.^[12]
• 1974 – navă-bază “mother ship” in the press.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A ship or other large vessel built to travel on or under water, carrying people or goods or doing technical work.^[5][2][1]
2. An aircraft; especially a spacecraft: navă spațială.^[5][2]
3. The nave of a church, the naos.^[5][2]

Word family

• aeronavă
• astronavă

Related words

• naie
• naval
• naviga
• Latin nāvis

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 100
3. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 853
4. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. navă
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 691
6. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. návă
7. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. navă
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ 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. naie
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, p. s.v. navă
11. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 138
12. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 420
13. ^ Candrea, I.-A.; Adamescu, Gh. (1926–1931), Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Românească”, București: Cartea Românească, p. s.v. navă
14. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. návă