regat

Forms

regat n (plural regate)^[1] An older variant is rigat, formed on rigă “king”; the earliest record has its plural: „Relațiile negoțului între aceste două rigaturi” “the trade relations between these two kingdoms” (1829).^[2][3] Besides the plural regate, older texts have regaturi.^[2][4]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian rege (“king”) + -at.^[4][5][2][1] The older variant rigat was formed in the same way on rigă, the older word for “king”.^[3][6] The DLR and Scriban compare Modern Greek ρηγάτον (rigáton, “kingdom”), formed on the Greek word for “king”.^[2][7]

rege is a 19th-century learned word, from Latin rēgem (“king”), and a doublet of that older word for “king”, which comes from Byzantine Greek ῥήγας (rhḗgas).^[3][1] The Latin word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₃rḗǵs (“king, ruler”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is from 1829, in the plural rigaturi: a text speaks of the trade between two kingdoms.^[2][4][6] Negulici's dictionary of neologisms explained regat in 1848 as a state governed by a king and gave Latin rēgnum beside it.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The word named foreign kingdoms and kingdoms of the past: Bălcescu wrote of a kingdom that fell into civil strife and was subdued by the emperor Basil II.^[2][10] Eminescu has the line „Un regat pentr-o țigară” “a kingdom for a cigarette”, and Minulescu used it figuratively of “the eternal kingdom of the stars”.^[2] By extension it can mean an empire.^[4]

After the First World War the Vechiul Regat “the Old Kingdom” was the name of the Romania of before the war, Wallachia and Moldavia, as against the provinces united with it in 1918.^[5][6] The DLR quotes it from Galaction, Sadoveanu and Arghezi, often simply regat for that region.^[2] A person from there was a regățean.^[3]

Timeline

• 1829 – rigaturi “kingdoms”, the first record.^[2][4][6]
• 1848 – regat in Negulici's dictionary of neologisms.^[9]
• 1870 – regatŭ “royaume” in Costinescu's Romanian–French dictionary.^[11]
• after 1918 – Vechiul Regat, the Romania of before the First World War.^[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. A kingdom: a state ruled by a king; a monarchy.^[5][4][1]
2. By extension, an empire.^[4]
3. Vechiul Regat “the Old Kingdom”: Romania as it was before the First World War (Wallachia and Moldavia), the name used after the war until the republic.^[5][6]

Word family

• regățean

Related words

• rege
• rigă

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. regat
3. ^ a b c d 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. rege
4. ^ 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, 678
5. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 936
6. ^ 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. regat
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1111
8. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ 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, p. s.v. regat
10. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 712
11. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 416