primăvară

Forms

primăvară f (plural primăveri)^[1] The variant primăveară is found in Bălcescu: „În primăveara viitoare va merge să bată Viena” “next spring he will go to besiege Vienna”.^[2] MDA2 also lists the regional variants primevară, primovară and prinvară, and regional plurals such as primăvări.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin prīma vēra (“early spring”), a Late Latin feminine noun made from the plural of prīmum vēr, literally “first spring”, and recorded in Late Latin glosses.^[1][4][5] Its parts are prīmus (“first”) and vēr (“spring”).^[1] The phrase first meant the early part of spring and later the whole season;^[1] Wiktionary links this to the shift of the old word for spring, which became Romanian vară “summer”.^[1]

The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian primuvearã, Megleno-Romanian primăveară and Istro-Romanian primavera.^[6][7][1] Albanian pranverë matches it.^[6][1] It is shared with the western Romance languages: Italian primavera, Occitan primavera, Catalan primavera, Spanish primavera, Portuguese primavera and French primevère.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, in a psalm verse that names summer and spring together.^[2][3] The sense is already the season after winter.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The core sense has stayed the season between winter and summer, from the spring equinox to the summer solstice.^[8][2] Used with the article as an adverb, primăvara means “in spring, every spring”.^[8] Figuratively it stands for youth, in primăvara vieții “the springtime of life”, and in the plural for years of a young person's age: are 20 de primăveri.^[8][9]

Timeline

• c. 1500-1520 – primăvara in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[3][2]
• 1581 – primăvara in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[2]
• 1664 – the lexicon Lex.Pet. uses primăvară to gloss the Slavonic word for spring.^[10]
• 1688 – primăvară in the Bucharest Bible.^[11]
• 1801 – Klein's dictionary has primavára.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. spring: the season after winter and before summer, in the northern hemisphere from about 21 March to 21 June.^[8][1]
2. (with the article, adverbial) In spring; every spring.^[8]
3. (figurative) primăvara vieții: youth.^[8]
4. (figurative, in the plural) Years of youth, a young person's age.^[8][9]

Word family

• primăvăratic
• primăvăriță
• primăvăros
• împrimăvăra
• desprimăvăra

Related words

• vară
• Aromanian primuvearã
• Latin vēr

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. primăvară
3. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 539
4. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. primăvară
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6754
6. ^ 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. primăvară
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 233
8. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 875
9. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1050
10. ^ 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. primăvară
11. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ps 73:18
12. ^ 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. 425