octombrie

Forms

octombrie m (uncountable)^[1] The old and popular variants include octomvrie, octovrie, octomvre and octombre;^[2][3] Banat, Transylvania, Maramureș and Moldova also have october, octobăr and optober.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic октѧбрь (oktębrĭ), the church and chancery name of the month.^[1][4][2][5] DEX names the form октоврий (oktovrii), MDA2 октомбрии (oktombrii).^[5][2][6] The Slavonic word comes from Byzantine Greek Ὀκτώβριος (Oktṓbrios), which is from Latin Octōber, the eighth month of the Roman year before the Julian reform, formed on octō (“eight”) after December.^[1][7] In Greek too a form with /m/, Ὀκτώμβριος (Oktṓmbrios), arose by analogy with the names of September, November and December.^[8][9]

The /m/ of the Romanian word may be Slavonic, as in Bulgarian октомври (oktomvri), or due to the analogy of noiembrie, as Tiktin and Graur hold;^[4][10] Ciorănescu leaves both open.^[4][10] The western variants such as october are from Hungarian október and German Oktober.^[3][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1512.^[10] MDA2 and the DLR quote it first from a Paraclis of 1639, in the old form octomvrie, as the name of the tenth month.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its one sense, the tenth month of the year, often in the phrase luna lui octombrie “the month of October”.^[2][3] Old texts prefer the Slavonic shape octomvrie; the Mineiul of 1776 has octovrie.^[3] Popular speech also names the month brumărel or brumar, from the first hoarfrost.^[2][5] The dialects keep many variants, mapped by the linguistic atlas of Romania: octombre and octomvere in Oltenia and southern Moldova, october, octobăr and optober in the north and west.^[3]

Timeline

• 1512 – the first record that Tiktin dates.^[10]
• 1639 – octomvrie in a Paraclis.^[2][3]
• 1678 – octomvrie in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1776 – octovrie in the Mineiul.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. October: the tenth month of the year, which follows September; popularly also brumărel or brumar.^[5][2]

Related words

• noiembrie
• septembrie
• brumărel
• Latin Octōber

Usage notes

It is often used with luna: în luna octombrie or în luna lui octombrie “in (the month of) October”.^[10][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 194
3. ^ 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. octombrie
4. ^ a b c 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. octombrie
5. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 734
6. ^ Miklosich, Franz (1862–1865), Lexicon palaeoslovenico-graeco-latinum emendatum auctum, Vindobonae: Braumüller
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Ινστιτούτο Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών (Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη) (1998), Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής, Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
9. ^ Kriaras, Emmanuel, Επιτομή του Λεξικού της μεσαιωνικής ελληνικής δημώδους γραμματείας 1100–1669, Κέντρο Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, https://www.greek-language.gr
10. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. octombrie
11. ^ 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. octomvrie