ordona

Forms

ordona (third-person singular present ordonă or ordonează, past participle ordonat) 1st conjugation^[2][1] In the sense “to command” the present is ordon, ordonă; in the sense “to arrange” it is ordonez, ordonează.^[2] The -ez forms were once used for both senses.^[3] An older variant ordina was formed by association with ordin: Negruzzi wrote „Guvernul a ordinat să se imprime operele lui” “the government ordered his works to be printed”.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French ordonner and, as MDA2, Tiktin and the DLR add, borrowed from German ordinieren.^[5][6][3] DEX, NODEX and the neologism dictionaries give only French.^[2][7][8][1] The variant ordina is due to ordin.^[3]

The French verb was borrowed in 1119 from Latin ordinō (“to put in order”), a derivative of ordo (“order, row”); its spelling was remade after donner.^[9][1] The same Latin verb survives in Romanian as the inherited urdina.^[10][11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in a print of 1703, which says that man should produce lofty thoughts and arrange them („să le ordineze”) in harmonious order.^[3][5][6] The sense “arrange” thus came first, with the variant form.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The sense “to command” is recorded in a calendar of 1794 (ordinește) and in Negulici's dictionary of 1848, where ordonare is glossed “to give an order”.^[3][12] It became the main sense: Caragiale wrote that the will that commands („care ordonă”) is to blame, not the arm that strikes.^[3] Barițiu used the verb for prescribing medicines, a sense now dated, and dictionaries from Șăineanu on record the Catholic sense “to ordain a priest”.^[3][13]

In mathematics the verb is used for arranging polynomials by powers and for an order relation on a set.^[3][8]

Timeline

• 1703 – ordineze “arrange” in a print, the first record.^[3][5]
• 1794 – ordinește “orders” in a calendar.^[3]
• 1848 – ordonare “to give an order” in Negulici.^[12]
• 1929 – Șăineanu lists the senses “arrange”, “order”, “prescribe” and “ordain”.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To order or command; to require or direct something.^[2][1]
2. (dated) To prescribe a medicine or a treatment.^[2][5]
3. To arrange, put in order or group in a certain way.^[2][1]
4. (mathematics) To set up an order relation among the elements of a set.^[8]
5. (Catholic Church) To ordain a priest.^[5][3]

Word family

• ordonat
• ordonare

Related words

• ordin
• ordine
• urdina
• coordona
• subordona
• ordonanță
• French ordonner
• Latin ordinō

Usage notes

The two presents divide the senses: Comandantul ordonă retragerea “the commander orders the retreat”, but Elevii ordonează cărțile pe raft “the pupils arrange the books on the shelf”.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 749
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. ordona
4. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 281
5. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 222
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. ordona
7. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. ordona
8. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. ordona
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
12. ^ 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
13. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 448