operație

Forms

operație f (plural operații)^[1] The older form operațiune survives beside it, and Molnar's text has the plural operațioane: „Operațioanele sau lucrările metalurghicești” “metallurgical operations or works”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin operātiō (“work, operation”), French opération and German Operation: DEX, MDA2 and DLR give all three as sources.^[4][5][2] Tiktin takes it from Latin, partly through other languages,^[3] and Wiktionary from French or German.^[1]

The Latin noun is formed on operor (“to work, to be busy”) with the suffix -tiō.^[6][1] The French word comes from Latin;^[1] the German one too, with the surgical sense from the second half of the 16th century and the military one from the end of the 17th.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1787.^[3] MDA2's first record is the early 19th-century manuscript of Samuil Vulcan's treatise on healing the diseases of country people, where it already means a surgical operation.^[5][2]

Semantic evolution

The general sense of an activity aimed at a result is recorded in Molnar and in an 1829 text on chemistry.^[2] The surgical sense appears with Vulcan and Asachi,^[2] and Negulici's dictionary of 1848 gives both.^[8] The military, financial and mathematical senses came later.^[5][4]

For financial and commercial transactions DEX prefers the variant operațiune.^[4] The press of the 1980s coined operație-maraton for a very long surgical operation.^[9]

Timeline

• 1787 – the first record Tiktin gives.^[3]
• early 19th century – the surgical sense in Samuil Vulcan's medical manuscript.^[5][2]
• 1848 – in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms, for the work of one who operates and of a surgeon.^[8]
• 1983 – operație-maraton in the press.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. An operation, a piece of work done by one or more people with some skill; an action performed by a device or a machine; by extension, any action or job.^[4][5]
2. A surgical operation on a diseased organ or tissue.^[4][5]
3. (military) A large-scale military action carried out as part of a strategic plan.^[4][5]
4. (finance) A financial or commercial transaction, and its entry in a register; usually in the form operațiune.^[4][5]
5. (mathematics) A procedure that yields one or more elements of a set; a rule for a calculation, or the calculation itself.^[4][5]

Related words

• operabil
• operant
• operare
• operativ
• operativitate
• operațiune

Usage notes

Operație and operațiune are variants of one word;^[4] DEX keeps operațiune for financial transactions.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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. operație
3. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. operație
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 744
5. ^ 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, 215
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
8. ^ 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. operație
9. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. operație