oarecare

Forms

oarecare m or f or n (plural oarecare)^[1] Old texts also write orecare, and an old plural oarecarii occurs: Dosoftei has „i-au zăritu-i orecarii și i-au pârât” “some people caught sight of them and denounced them”.^[2][3] A regional variant is oareșicare.^[4][5] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet the word was written оарекаре.^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian oare + care, of the interrogative particle oare and the relative pronoun care (“which, who”).^[2][3][4][1] Ciorănescu lists it among the indefinites formed on the particle, beside oarecine, oarece, oarecând and oarecum, with a parallel series in ⟨ori-⟩ (oricare, oricine); the two series are not sharply divided in meaning.^[6] Tiktin describes the pattern the same way: placed before a relative pronoun, the particle makes an indefinite pronoun, ⟨(un) oarecare⟩ “a certain one”.^[7]

The particle itself is of disputed origin: Ciorănescu, after Tiktin and Scriban, derives it from a popular form Vulgar Latin *volet used for vult (“wants”), and finds Candrea's derivation from oară (“time”) harder on the meaning.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), the 16th-century Romanian version of the Acts of the Apostles, where the word is a pronoun “someone, a certain one”: „deștinse oarecarele din iudei prorocu, cel ce era numele Agavu” “a certain prophet came down from Judea, whose name was Agabus”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

In the old language the word was above all a pronoun, “someone, somebody”, often with a partitive: Herodotus's Romanian translation of 1645 has „Oarecarile să sculă zicând” “someone rose and said”, and the Bucharest Bible of 1688 uses it 41 times.^[2][8] Coresi also used it for “whichever”, and 18th-century texts for “a few”.^[2][3] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use it to render Slavonic нѣкий “a certain”.^[9]

The pronoun has since become old-fashioned and regional, surviving in folk poetry („Doar m-a cere oarecare” “perhaps someone will ask for my hand”), while the adjectival use took over: “some, a certain” and “any one at all”.^[2][4] From “any one at all” came “ordinary, of no importance”, and the word used as a noun, un oarecare “a nobody”.^[4][5][1]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – the pronoun oarecarele “a certain one” in the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[3][2]
• 1645 – oarecarile “someone” in the Romanian translation of Herodotus.^[2]
• c. 1660 – the dative oarecărora in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[9]
• 1688 – 41 occurrences in the Bucharest Bible.^[8]
• 1741 – oarecarele “some, a few” in a church text.^[2]

Meanings

Determiner

1. some, a certain: one not identified or not specified more closely: cu oarecare greutate “with some difficulty”.^[4][3][1]
2. Any one at all, whichever: vino la o oră oarecare “come at any hour you like”.^[4][5]
3. Of no importance, ordinary, like any other.^[4][3]
4. (obsolete, in the plural) A few, some.^[3][1]

Pronoun

1. (dated, regional) someone, somebody; careva.^[4][2]
2. (obsolete, rare) Whichever, whatever; oricare.^[3][2]

Noun

1. (with the indefinite article) A nobody, an unimportant person: s-a purtat cu el ca un oarecare “he was treated like a nobody”.^[5][1]

Related words

• oare
• care
• oarecine
• oarece
• oarecum
• oricare

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. oarecare
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 180
4. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 727
5. ^ a b c d Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 235
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. oare
7. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. oare
8. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Facerea 38:1
9. ^ a b Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. oarecărora