proprietate

Forms

proprietate f (plural proprietăți)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin proprietas (“a peculiar quality; ownership”), also borrowed from French propriété.^[2][3][1] MDA2 and DLR also name Italian proprietà, and Tiktin gives New Latin and Italian.^[3][4][5] Wiktionary notes that it is equivalent to propriu with the suffix -ătate.^[1]

The Latin noun is formed on proprius (“one's own, peculiar”) with -tās; it first meant the special character of a thing, in imperial times also the right of possession.^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Dosoftei's Viața și petrecerea sfinților, in the December part, with the sense “characteristic quality”: proprietățile trupului “the properties of the body”;^[3][4] Tiktin dates it 1683, MDA2 to the work's span from 1682.^[5][3][4]

Semantic evolution

For more than a century the word meant a quality: Budai-Deleanu explained it as “an ancestral word” for the distinguishing qualities of a person or thing, and the Lexicon de la Buda (1825) gives only German Eigenschaft (“property, quality”).^[5][4][8] The legal sense of ownership and of the land or house owned appears in the dictionaries of the mid-19th century: Pontbriant (1862) gives possession and estate, Barițiu (1869) uses it for Hungarian words for possession, and Costinescu (1870) defines it as the right by which a thing belongs to someone.^[9][10][11] Grammarians use it for the exactness with which a word renders an idea.^[2][12]

Timeline

• 1683 – proprietățile trupului in Dosoftei, the first record.^[5][4]
• early 19th century – Budai-Deleanu glosses it as a word for distinguishing qualities.^[5][4]
• 1814 – the properties of lion and man in Țichindeal's fables.^[4]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda: quality only.^[8]
• 1862 – Pontbriant: possession, estate.^[9]
• 1870 – Costinescu: the right of ownership and the thing owned.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. ownership: full possession of a good by a recognized right; concretely, the property owned, especially land or a building: proprietate privată “private property”.^[2][3][1]
2. A characteristic, a dominant feature that distinguishes a being, thing or phenomenon from others: proprietățile metalelor “the properties of metals”.^[2][3]
3. The quality of a word, term or style of rendering an idea exactly, propriety.^[2][13]

Related words

• propriu
• proprietar
• Latin proprietas

Usage notes

Proprietate intelectuală is intellectual property, the rights to literary, artistic and scientific works; older dictionaries speak of proprietate literară (sau artistică).^[2][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 886
3. ^ 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, 570
4. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. proprietate
5. ^ 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. proprietate
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ 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. 553
9. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 591
10. ^ Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 585
11. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 369
12. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1064
13. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. proprietate