planetă

Forms

planetă f (plural planete)^[1] Old texts also have a masculine planet and the forms planit and planită.^[2][3] Ienăchiță Văcărescu wrote planită: „Acestea sunt stele și se numesc planite” “these are stars and are called planets”.^[4] In the Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet the word was written планетэ.^[1]

Etymology

The dictionaries name several sources: DEX 2009 and the neologism dictionaries say it is borrowed from French planète and Latin planēta;^[3][5][6] MDA2 adds German Planet,^[2] and Marcu and Maneca put the Latin word first, beside the Greek word.^[7] Ciorănescu separates two layers: an older loan from Modern Greek πλανήτης (planítis) in the 18th century and the modern word from French.^[8] Tiktin, who dates the word to 1642, takes it from the Latin word or from the Byzantine and Modern Greek one.^[4]

The Latin word is a Late Latin term for what classical Latin called the wandering stars.^[9] It is borrowed from Ancient Greek πλανήτης (planḗtēs, “wanderer”),^[10][1] formed from πλανάω (planáō, “to wander”) with the agent suffix -της (-tēs).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Cazania of Govora of 1642, and he cites a psalter of 1651.^[4] MDA2's first record is a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of the 17th century.^[2] In the older language the word meant a wandering star, as opposed to the fixed stars.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The astronomical sense narrowed in the 19th century to a body without light of its own that turns around the Sun;^[12] Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 lists eleven planets, from Mercury to Uranus, with Vesta, Juno, Ceres and Pallas among them.^[12] Scriban explains the modern sense the same way and adds the secondary planets, the satellites.^[11] By restriction planeta can mean the Earth itself.^[3][13]

An astrological sense ran beside it: the sign or star under which someone is born, and so a person's fate.^[8][14] Costinescu has a fi născut sub o planetă norocită “to be born under a lucky planet”, after French né sous une heureuse planète.^[12] From this came the planetă of the fairgrounds, a slip with a naive prediction that a barrel-organ player sold, picked at random by a trained parrot or white mouse.^[3][2]

Timeline

• 1642 – first record, in the Cazania of Govora.^[4]
• 1651 – in a psalter.^[4]
• 17th century – in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, MDA2's first record.^[2]
• 1801 – Pláneta in Klein's dictionary.^[15]
• 1825 – Planetă in the Lexicon de la Buda, glossed Latin planeta, Hungarian plánéta, German Planet.^[16]
• 1848 – in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[17]
• 1870 – the astronomical definition with the list of the known planets in Costinescu.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A planet: a body without light of its own that orbits the Sun and shows in the sky as a point of reflected light; by restriction, the Earth.^[3][2][1]
2. Any dark body that orbits a star.^[3][1]
3. (dated) The zodiac sign under which someone is born; a person's fate.^[3][8]
4. (dated) A slip of paper with a fortune written on it, drawn at random by a trained parrot or mouse and sold by barrel-organ players.^[3][2]

Word family

• planetar

Related words

• interplanetar
• planetariu
• planetoid
• planetologie
• Latin planeta

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 Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 404
3. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 827
4. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. planetă
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. planetă
6. ^ 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. planetă
7. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. planetă
8. ^ a b c 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. planetă
9. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 992
12. ^ a b c d Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 301
13. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 449
14. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 485
15. ^ Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 418
16. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 510
17. ^ 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. planetă