perspectivă

Forms

perspectivă f (plural perspective)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French perspective, one of the 19th-century French neologisms.^[2][3][1][4] Graur lists it among the Romanian descendants of the Latin family of speciō (“to look”), deriving it from Late Latin perspectīva.^[5] The French word is a learned borrowing from Latin perspectīvus, from perspiciō.^[1]

A now obsolete homonym meaning “spyglass” came from German Perspektiv.^[6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is Wallenstein's Elemente de deseniu și de arhitectură (Bucharest, 1836), a textbook of drawing, in the sense of representing bodies in space on a flat surface.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word came in as a term of drawing and painting.^[3] Negulici in 1848 defines it as the art of showing objects according to their distance, and already gives the figurative sense “someone's future”.^[7] Costinescu in 1870 distinguishes linear and aerial perspective, a painting of a distant view, the view itself, and the phrase a avea o perspectivă frumoasă “to have fine prospects”, after French avoir une belle perspective.^[8]

From the drawing sense came a way of seeing things, a point of view; from the distant view came a landscape or vista; looking ahead gave the prospects of a plan or of a person.^[2][3] În perspectivă means both “in perspective” in drawing and “in prospect, in the future”.^[2][9]

Timeline

• 1836 – in Wallenstein's Elemente de deseniu și de arhitectură, the first record.^[3]
• 1848 – Negulici records it as a neologism, with the figurative sense “someone's future”.^[7]
• 1870 – Costinescu's perspectivă liniară, perspectivă aeriană and în perspectivă.^[8]
• 1966 – the derived adjective perspectival in the review Contemporanul.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. perspective: the three-dimensional representation of a body on a flat surface;^[2][3][1] în perspectivă “in perspective”, following the rules of distance.^[2][3][1]
2. The branch of drawing that studies these methods.^[2][3]
3. (figurative) A particular way of seeing things; a point of view.^[2][3]
4. A view of a landscape, scene or object seen from a distance; a vista.^[2][11]
5. A long, straight avenue.^[11]
6. (figurative) A prospect: what can be foreseen as possible in the future;^[2][3][1] în perspectivă “in prospect”; in the plural, someone's future chances: un tânăr cu perspective “a young man with prospects”.^[2][3][1]

Word family

• perspectival

Related words

• aspect
• prospect
• respect
• French perspective

Usage notes

A separate word perspectivă (also neuter perspectiv, perșpectiv) meant “spyglass, binoculars” in the 19th century; it was taken from German Perspektiv and is first recorded in 1830, in Teodorovici's translation of Leopold Simani's Pruncii cei părăsiți.^[6][3]

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 h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 807
3. ^ 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, 355
4. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria, p. s.v. perspectivă
5. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 91
6. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. perspectivă
7. ^ 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. perspectivă
8. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 284
9. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 477
10. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. perspectival
11. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. perspectivă