persoană

Forms

persoană f (plural persoane)^[1] Older variants are personă and perzonă.^[2] Petru Maior writes „în persona păcătosului” “in the person of the sinner”.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin persōna;^[2][3][4][1] MDA2 and the DLR also name French personne, German Person and Italian persona as sources.^[2][3][4][1] The dictionaries differ on the source: Tiktin gives New Latin alone, Ciorănescu French alone, and MDA2 and the DLR Latin, German, Italian and French together.^[5][6][2][3]

The Latin word first meant a mask, especially an actor's.^[7] Its origin is unknown: it is perhaps from Etruscan, which may have taken the word from Ancient Greek πρόσωπον (prósōpon, “face, mask”).^[7][1] The Roman explanation from personō (“to sound through”) is unlikely, since the vowel lengths do not match.^[1][8] Besides Italian and French, it lives on in Spanish persona and Portuguese pessoa.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in Dosoftei in 1681, in the sense “person”.^[5] MDA2 dates it from a document of before 1768 in Iorga's Studii și documente.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The 18th-century quotations use it of people in general, as in a school rule on rising when „persoane străine de cinu besericesc” “persons not of the clergy” came in.^[3] Later came the phrase în persoană “in person, oneself” and the legal terms persoană fizică and persoană juridică.^[10][11] Grammar took it for the category of grammatical person, and theology for each of the three persons of the Trinity.^[12][13] The old sense “character in a play” passed to personaj.^[10][2]

Timeline

• 1681 – first record, in Dosoftei.^[5]
• before 1768 – in a document published by Iorga.^[2]
• 1779 – „toată persoana” “every person” in Chesarie.^[3]
• 1794 – the variant personă in a calendar.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person: a human being, considered with all their physical and mental traits; an individual;^[10][2][1] în persoană “in person; personified”.^[10][2][1]
2. (law) persoană fizică “natural person”;^[10][2] persoană juridică “legal person”, an organisation with rights and duties of its own.^[10][2]
3. (grammar) grammatical person: the category of the verb and of some pronouns that marks the speaker, the hearer and anyone else.^[10][2]
4. (religion) Each of the three persons of the Trinity.^[10][12]
5. (dated) A character in a play or story.^[10][2]

Related words

• personal
• personaj
• personalitate
• personifica
• impersonal

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 l m Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 354
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. persoană
4. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. persoană
5. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. persoánă
6. ^ 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. persoană
7. ^ a b Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6430
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 807
11. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. persoană
12. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 969
13. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 477