rând

Forms

rând n (plural rânduri)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic рѧдъ (rędŭ, “row, order”), a loan from the Slavonic of the church and chancery.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The Slavonic word continues Proto-Slavic *rędъ (“row, line”).^[1] DEX and Scriban write the Slavonic form in an older transliteration, ⟨rendŭ⟩, with the nasal vowel spelled out.^[6][4]

Ciorănescu compares the Slavic word's other descendants in the region: Bulgarian ред (red), Albanian red and Hungarian rend (“order”).^[2] The Hungarian word is itself a loan from Slavic.^[7] Hungarian enters the history of the Romanian word only at its edges: Tiktin derives one of its senses from the Hungarian word, and the Maramureș verb rândului “to order” comes from Hungarian rendelni, a view Ciorănescu takes from Candrea.^[8][2] No source takes the Romanian word itself from Hungarian. Albanian rend is also a loan from Old Church Slavonic, with the nasal kept, like the Romanian word.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is in the Codicele Voronețean, a 16th-century manuscript of the Acts and Epistles, at 1 Peter 5:3.^[8] The 1570 psalter of Coresi has the form rînd at Psalm 137:4.^[11] In Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581 it already means a row of stones: „Piatra ce nu în rând feaceră ziditorii” “the stone that the builders did not put in the row”.^[3][5]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is a straight row of things or people, and much of the rest grew from it: a line of written text, a queue, the ranks of an army, a layer, a set of clothes, a generation of people.^[2][6][4] The idea of succession gave “turn” (a-i veni rândul “for one's turn to come”) and “time, occasion” (în mai multe rânduri “several times”).^[12][4] The idea of order gave “class, rank” and, in the old language, “social category”, from which de rând “common, ordinary” comes.^[2][4] The old chroniclers also use it for “custom, way of doing things”: Moxa says of a ruler that he did not know rândul of war.^[8]

Romanian built a family on it, among them rândui “to arrange”, which Ciorănescu takes from a Slavonic verb, and rânduială “order, rite”.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1563-1583 – in the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[8]
• 1570 – rînd in Coresi's psalter.^[11]
• 1581 – “row” in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[3][5]
• 1649 – rînd in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[13]
• 1688 – the Bucharest Bible uses rând, rândul and rânduri about 75 times.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. A row or line of things or people set side by side: un rând de copaci “a row of trees”.^[4][3]
2. A line of writing or print: a citi printre rânduri “to read between the lines”.^[4][8]
3. The place due to someone in a series; one's turn: la rândul meu “in my turn”.^[4]
4. A time or occasion: de rândul acesta “this time”.^[4][12]
5. A group of people or things forming a whole; a layer or a set: un rând de haine “a suit of clothes”.^[4][6]
6. (dated) A social category;^[4][12] de rând “common, ordinary”: om de rând “an ordinary person”.^[4][12]
7. Custom, the way things are done: a ști rândul “to know how things go”.^[4][8]

Word family

• rândui
• rânduială
• neorânduială
• rândaș
• rânduitor

Related words

• orândui
• Old Church Slavonic рѧдъ (rędŭ)

Usage notes

The adverbial phrases are very common: pe rând “one after another, in turn”, de-a rândul “in a row, without a break”, în primul rând “first of all”.^[4][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. rînd
3. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 657
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 922
5. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. rînd
6. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1130
7. ^ Benkő, Loránd (ed.) (1967–1976), A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára, 3 vols., Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, p. 3, 378
8. ^ 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. rând
9. ^ Demiraj, Bardhyl (ed.), Digitales philologisch-etymologisches Wörterbuch des Albanischen, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
10. ^ Çabej, Eqrem (2002), Studime etimologjike në fushë të shqipes VI (N–Rr), Tiranë, p. 287
11. ^ 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 137:4
12. ^ a b c d Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 531
13. ^ 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. rînd
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Genesis 22:15