poet

Forms

poet m (plural poeți, feminine equivalent poetă or poetesă)^[1] The older form is poeta, plural poete: „cum va vrea poeta” “as the poet will wish”, in Văcărescu's grammar.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Modern Greek ποιητής (poiitís), with Latin poēta, Italian poeta and French poète, the several sources the DEX names for this learned borrowing.^[4][5] Tiktin gives New Latin, Italian and French, MDA2 French and German Poet, and Ciorănescu and Wiktionary French alone.^[6][3][7][1] Wiktionary compares Aromanian puet.^[1]

The Latin word was borrowed from Ancient Greek ποιητής (poiētḗs, “maker, poet”).^[8][1] The Greek word is a noun of ποιέω (poiéō, “to make, compose”).^[9] From Latin the word spread to the languages of Europe.^[9] German borrowed it in the 13th century.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is poeta in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon of about 1660, in a remark that nouns taken from Greek, such as poeta, are masculine.^[6][2][3] Constantin Cantacuzino writes poet early in the 18th century, calling Ovid a very old poet.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The word kept its sense of a writer of verse from the first records on;^[2] poeta and poet were used side by side as late as Budai-Deleanu's Țiganiada (c. 1800–1812) and Țichindeal.^[2] In 1848 a periodical lists „literați, autori, poeți”, and Negulici's dictionary of the same year has poet.^[2][11] Later it came to mean any person with a poet's imagination and sensibility, and a prose writer with poetic talent.^[3][4] Used like an adjective, as in Eminescu's împărat poet “poet emperor”, it describes a quality.^[2]

Ciorănescu derives the old noun poetic “poet” (18th century) from Byzantine Greek, while the adjective poetic, poezie and poetiza are French loans and poetastru an Italian one.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1660 – poeta in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon, the first record.^[6][2]
• c. 1716 – poet in Constantin Cantacuzino's history of Wallachia.^[2]
• c. 1800–1812 – poet and poeți in Budai-Deleanu's Țiganiada.^[2]
• 1848 – poet in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A poet, a person who writes poems.^[4][3][1]
2. (by extension) A prose writer with a poetic imagination.^[3]
3. (figurative) A person with a poet's sensibility and imagination.^[4][12]

Related words

• poetesă
• poezie
• poetă
• poetastru
• Ancient Greek ποιητής (poiētḗs)

Usage notes

The feminine is poetă (plural poete); Wiktionary also gives poetesă.^[4][1] The word is said in two syllables, po-et.^[12]

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 Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. poet
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 442
4. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 840
5. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria
6. ^ 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. poét
7. ^ a b 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. poet
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
11. ^ 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
12. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România