plantă

Forms

plantă f (plural plante)^[1] MDA2 records the old variants plant and plântă.^[2] Negulici's dictionary of 1848 spells it in the transitional alphabet as ПΛANTЪ.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin planta (“shoot, sprout”), borrowed from French plante, as DEX, MDA2 and the neologism dictionaries state.^[4][2][5][6] Tiktin names Latin first, and Scriban gives Latin alone.^[7][8] Wiktionary calls it a doublet of plântă, the form Romanian inherited.^[1]

The Latin word meant both the sole of the foot and a shoot or cutting for planting.^[9][10][11] De Vaan reports the view that the plant sense was formed back from an unattested verb *plantō (“to level the earth, to tread in”), so that both senses go back to one word.^[11] The plant sense continues in Italian pianta and Catalan planta, and in French.^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is from Șincai in 1806: „Plantele, legumele și ierburile încă nu pot creaște” “the plants, the vegetables and the herbs cannot grow yet”.^[7] MDA2 dates it to Budai-Deleanu's Romanian–German lexicon of 1818.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The Lexicon de la Buda of 1825 glosses plantă with Latin planta and German Pflanze, a plant to be set out.^[13] Negulici's 1848 dictionary of new words explains it as what grows out of the earth.^[3] By 1870 Costinescu used it as the general word for trees, shrubs and herbs, and figuratively for a young boy or girl.^[14]

The scientific sense, any organism that draws its food through roots and has chlorophyll, sits beside the narrower everyday sense of a herb grown or used by people.^[4][15] Teenage slang uses plantă for a dimwit.^[16]

Timeline

• 1806 – in Șincai, the first record.^[7]
• 1818 – in Budai-Deleanu's lexicon.^[2]
• 1825 – glossed planta, Pflanze in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[13]
• 1848 – in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[3]
• 1957 – plantă “sole of the foot”, a separate anatomical term.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A plant: an organism that takes its food through roots, has chlorophyll and cell walls of cellulose, and in the higher kinds a root, stem and leaves.^[4][1]
2. (narrower) A herbaceous plant grown by people or growing wild and useful to them: plante medicinale “medicinal plants”.^[4][17]
3. (slang) A dimwit.^[16]

Related words

• plântă
• planta
• plantar

Usage notes

DEX has a second plantă, the anatomical term for the sole of the foot, with the same Latin and French source;^[4][2] MDA2 first records it in 1957.^[4][2] The adjective plantar “of the sole” is from French plantaire.^[18]

References

1. ^ a b c 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, 405
3. ^ a b c 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. plantă
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 827
5. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. plantă
6. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. plantă
7. ^ 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. plantă
8. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 992
9. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6575
13. ^ a b 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
14. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 302
15. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 450
16. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. plantă
17. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. plantă
18. ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. plantar