renunța

Forms

renunța (third-person singular present renunță, past participle renunțat) 1st conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French renoncer, with Latin renūntiō (“to announce back; to give up”) as a second model, a neologism of the 19th century with two models.^[2][3][4][5] Tiktin takes it after French alone.^[6] The Latin verb is formed from re- and nūntiō (“to announce”); it meant “to report, send back”, then “to give up”, and in Church Latin “to renounce the world”.^[7] French had it from the 12th century, first as Old French renoncier.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Heliade Rădulescu's translation of Byron's Don Juan (1847), in the form renunțiind “giving up” drink and pills.^[3][4][6]

Semantic evolution

The meaning has stayed “to give up”, usually with la: to stop doing something, or to abandon something or someone willingly.^[2][3] MDA2 records the old variants renunția and renonsa, which show the Latin and the French model.^[3] Pontbriant in 1862 still glossed it with French renoncer and abandonner.^[8]

Timeline

• 1847 – first record, in Heliade Rădulescu's Don Juan.^[3][6]
• 1862 – in Pontbriant's dictionary, with the Latin model.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive, with la) To give up something; to stop doing something: a renunțat la fumat “he gave up smoking”.^[2][3][1]
2. (intransitive) To abandon something or someone of one's own will.^[2][3]

Related words

• anunța

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 942
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, 690
4. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. renunța
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. renunța
6. ^ 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. renunța
7. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
8. ^ a b Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 624