Etymology and origin of the Romanian word post
post1 post, position, job; station
Etymology tree of post1
From the same root · post1
Forms
post n (plural posturi)[1]
Etymology
The word for the post or position is borrowed from French poste and German Posten, as MDA2 and Tiktin give it.[2][3] DEX and Ciorănescu name French alone, and Ciorănescu takes the military sense through Russian пост (post).[4][5] Scriban too derives it from French, with Russian as a further route.[6]
French took the word from Italian posto about 1636, as a military term: it is the past participle of porre (“to place”) used as a noun.[7] The German noun comes from the same Italian word.[8][9] Italian goes back to Latin positus (“placed”), the participle of pōnō (“to put, place”).[8][6][10] Ciorănescu calls the word a doublet of poștă.[5]
Earliest recorded meaning
Tiktin's first record is of 1789.[3] MDA2's is a document from before 1819 in the Uricariul.[2]
Semantic evolution
Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 gives the military sense, the place where a commander puts a soldier or officer, and the civil one, a function in the administration.[11] The military meaning matches the 18th-century German Posten “guard post”;[9] the meaning “job, office” became the first sense of modern dictionaries.[4][2] Further senses name a rural police or gendarmerie post, a place for a technical activity such as post telefonic, and an item in an account book.[4] Bulgarian пост (post) “responsible office”, recorded from 1849, may have come through Romanian or Turkish as well as French.[12]
Timeline
- 1789 – first record.[3]
- before 1819 – a document in the Uricariul.[2]
- 1870 – the military and administrative senses in Costinescu's dictionary.[11]
- 1875 – glossed with French poste, emploi, service.[13]
Meanings
Noun
- A position, job, funcție, slujbă;[4][2] la post “at one's post, on duty”.[4][2]
- A place held by a small military unit carrying out an order; the unit itself.[4][2]
- A rural police or gendarmerie unit and the building it occupies.[4][2]
- The place of a sentry or of a traffic officer; guard duty;[4][2] (rare) a sentry.[4][2]
- An installation equipped for a technical operation, or the place where a worker carries one out: post telefonic, post de observație.[4]
- An item in an account book, and the column that records it.[4]
- (Internet) A post on a forum or social network.[1]
post2 fast, fasting
- Confidence
- Established
- Formation
- Borrowing
- First attested
- c. 1500–1520 Psaltirea Hurmuzaki
- Borrowed from
- Old Church Slavonic постъ
- Ultimate origin
- Proto-Slavic *postъ
Forms
post n (plural posturi)[1]
Etymology
The word for the fast is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic постъ (postŭ, “fast”), a word of the Slavonic church.[5][4][2][14][6] It continues Proto-Slavic *postъ, which Wiktionary takes from Proto-West Germanic *fastā (“fast, fasting”);[1] Vasmer also derives it from Old High German, and Cihac already compared the Germanic verbs for “to fast” in 1879.[15][16] Ciorănescu lists the Slavic cognates, among them Bulgarian пост (post), Russian пост (post) and Polish post.[5][17]
Megleno-Romanian has post too, with the verb pustes (“to fast”);[5][18] Capidan derives it from the Bulgarian word.[18]
Earliest recorded meaning
The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century: „Mi smeriia cu postul sufletul micu” “I humbled my soul with fasting”.[2][19][20] The Codicele Voronețean has it at Acts 27:9.[14]
Semantic evolution
The word means abstaining from food, above all from animal food, as the Orthodox Church prescribes for certain days and seasons, and the season itself.[4][2] Scriban lists the four fasts of the Orthodox year: Easter (Postul Mare, seven weeks), Saint Peter's, the Dormition and Christmas.[6] Food that may be eaten then is de post, and the phrase came to mean “cooked without meat or fat”.[2][4] By extension the word means going hungry and, colloquially, any abstinence.[4] Romanian derived the verb posti and the adjective postnic after Slavonic models.[5]
Timeline
- c. 1500-1520 – postul in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.[2][20]
- c. 1563-1583 – the Codicele Voronețean, at Acts 27:9.[14]
- 1589 – post in Coresi's psalter of 1589.[21]
- 1660 – post glossing Slavonic въздержание “abstinence” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.[22]
- 1688 – „cu post și cu sac și cu plângere” “with fasting, and with sackcloth, and with mourning” in the Bucharest Bible (Joel 2:12).[14][23]
Meanings
Noun
- A fast: abstaining from some foods, usually of animal origin, as the Church prescribes;[4][2] a ține post “to fast”.[4][2]
- de post: (of food) prepared only with foods the Church allows, without meat or animal fat;[4][2] (of days) on which one fasts.[4][2]
- A fasting season before a feast;[4][14] Postul Mare “Lent”, before Easter.[4][14]
- (colloquial) abstinence.[4]
Word family
- posti
- postnic
- postitor
Related words
- poștă
- pune
- Old Church Slavonic постъ (postŭ)
Usage notes
DEX numbers three words post: post¹, the prefix post- “after”, from Latin post and French post- (as in postbelic); post², the position; and post³, the fast.[4][24] The fast has fixed sayings: mare cât o zi de post “as long as a day of fasting”, very long, and martie din post nu lipsește “March is never missing from Lent”, of someone always present where there is profit.[4]
References
- ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 481
- ^ 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. post 2
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 854
- ^ a b c d e f 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. post
- ^ a b c d Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1, 1023
- ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
- ^ a b Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
- ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
- ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 91
- ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 326
- ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 5, 545
- ^ Antonescu, G. M. (1875), Dictionariu romanu-francesu, Bucuresci: Typografia Curții (Lucrători Associați), p. 238
- ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. post 1
- ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
- ^ Cihac, A. de (1879), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane II: Éléments slaves, magyars, turcs, grecs-moderne et albanais, Frankfurt am Main, p. 279
- ^ Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 5, 543
- ^ a b Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 229
- ^ Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. post³
- ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 34:16
- ^ Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 108:23
- ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. post
- ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Joel 2:12
- ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. post
Related etymologies
Cite this entry
“Post.” Etymologically, 12 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/post. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.
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