organ

Forms

organ n (plural organe)^[1] A rare feminine organă and a regional horgan are recorded.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Byzantine Greek ὄργανον (órganon, “instrument”), partly by way of Slavonic: borrowed from Old Church Slavonic оръганъ (orŭganŭ), the Slavonic word of the psalters.^[3][4][1][5] That older layer, first meaning a musical instrument, is the word DEX lists separately as organ².^[6][2] The modern senses, “part of the body”, “part of a machine” and “body of an institution”, came with the neologisms: DEX and the DLR name borrowed from Modern Greek όργανον (órganon), borrowed from Italian organo, borrowed from Latin organum, borrowed from French organe, borrowed from German Organ, also borrowed from Russian орган (organ).^[6][7] DN and MDN give the Latin, French, German and Russian words.^[8][9]

The Greek word, ὄργανον (órganon, “implement, tool, instrument; organ of the body”), belongs with ἔργον (érgon, “work”).^[10][1] The Latin loan, “a mechanical device, an instrument”, came in Late Latin to mean the organ.^[11][12] It survives south of the Danube as Aromanian organ, the musical organ.^[3][13] The Bulgarian etymological dictionary, following Rosetti, also takes the instrument word from Slavonic.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are the plural organe “musical instruments” in the 16th-century psalters: the Psaltirea Voronețeană (c. 1551–1558) has it in Psalm 151:2, Coresi's psalter of 1570 in Psalm 150:4, “praise him with strings and organs”.^[15][16] Tiktin and MDA2 cite the Psaltirea Scheiană, where the exiles hang their organe on the willows (Psalm 136:2).^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

In the old texts the word meant a musical instrument, especially the harp or lyre of the psalms;^[7][3] DER notes that this sense is obsolete.^[7][3] From the 18th century it also named the church organ, the sense later taken over by orgă, from French orgue.^[4][3] Cantemir is the first to use it for a part of the body (organele văzătoare “the organs of sight”), and he also used it figuratively for an agent or tool of someone's will (organul răutății “the instrument of malice”).^[7][2] A manuscript of 1750 calls the seven deadly sins the devil's organe.^[4][7]

The 19th century brought the senses of the neologism: the organs of sense in an 1814 calendar, “voice” and “mouth”, a part of a machine, and a newspaper that speaks for a party (organ de presă), a use of the sense “instrument of communication”.^[7][2] The last sense, a body of people with a political or administrative function, is the one of organele statului “the organs of the state”.^[6][2]

Timeline

• c. 1551–1558 – organe “musical instruments” in the Psaltirea Voronețeană.^[15]
• 1570 – organe in Coresi's psalter.^[16]
• c. 1573–1578 – organele in the Psaltirea Scheiană, MDA2's first record.^[2][4]
• 1649 – organ glossing Slavonic органъ in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[17]
• 1688 – organe in the Bucharest Bible.^[18][4]
• 1750 – the deadly sins as the devil's organe in a manuscript.^[4][7]
• 1814 – organ of sensation in a calendar: the brain as the common organ of feeling.^[7]
• 1848 – Negulici defines it as a part of the body serving the senses and the functions of the animal, and figuratively a person through whom another acts.^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. An organ of the body: a part of a living being that performs one or more vital functions: inima este un organ vital.^[6][2][1]
2. The mouth; by extension the voice.^[6][2]
3. A component of a mechanism, apparatus or machine, made of one or more pieces with a particular function: organe de mașini.^[6][2]
4. (figurative) A means or instrument of action or communication; by extension a representative or intermediary.^[6][2]
5. A newspaper or journal that speaks for a group: organul partidului.^[6][9]
6. A body of people with a political, social or administrative function, and the institution they form: organele de anchetă.^[6][2]

Word family

• organic
• organizator
• dezorganiza
• organism
• organist
• organiza
• organizație
• reorganiza
• anorganic

Related words

• orgă
• Aromanian organ
• Ancient Greek ὄργανον (órganon)

Usage notes

DEX and MDA2 keep the old instrument word apart as organ² (obsolete): “harp, lyre” and “organ (the instrument)”, from Slavonic, Modern Greek, Latin and Italian, with the regional sense “double bass” in MDA2;^[6][2][3][4] DER and Tiktin treat it with the body-part word as one word of Greek origin.^[6][2][3][4] The organ of churches is now orgă.^[3] An unrelated organ is a variant of arcan “lasso”.^[2][7]

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 k l m n o Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 223
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. organ
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. orgán
5. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 750
7. ^ 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. organ
8. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. organ
9. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. organ
10. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. ὄργανον
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. organum
12. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. orgue
13. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 777
14. ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 4, 915
15. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 151:2
16. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 150:4
17. ^ 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. organ
18. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. 2 Kingdoms 6:5
19. ^ 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. organ