restaurant

Forms

restaurant n (plural restaurante)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French restaurant, as DEX, MDA2, the DLR, DN, MDN and Tiktin give it.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][1]} The French word is the present participle of restaurer (“to restore”), which corresponds to Latin restaurō.^[1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1813.^[7] MDA2 and the DLR quote it first from the press of 1846: „Aci sunt restaurantele, cafeurile” “here are the restaurants, the cafés”.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

The word named the new kind of public eating house that served food and drink for payment, beside the older birt and ospătărie, which Damé and the DLRLC give as equivalents.^[9][10] The DLR records an older synonym restaurație.^[4][3] Caragiale, Vlahuță, Sadoveanu and Arghezi use it in the modern sense.^[4]

The compound vagon-restaurant “dining car” is quoted from Galaction.^[4] Later compounds such as restaurant-berărie “beer restaurant” and restaurant-cantină are recorded in the press from 1967.^[11]

Timeline

• 1813 – first record, after Tiktin.^[7]
• 1846 – restaurantele in the press.^[3][4]
• 1870 – Costinescu explains it as a restoring food and as an eating house.^[12]
• 1967 – restaurant-berărie and restaurant-cabană in the press.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A restaurant: a public eating place that cooks food in its own kitchen and serves it, with drinks, for payment; the premises of such a business: Am cinat într-un restaurant din centru.^[2][3][1]
2. vagon-restaurant – a dining car attached to a passenger train.^[3][4]

Related words

• restaura
• restaurație

Usage notes

The word is pronounced with /a/ and /u/ in separate syllables (-sta-u-).^[2] DN gives a second plural restauranturi beside restaurante.^[5] Scriban also records a rare adjective restaurant “restoring”, and Costinescu in 1870 explained the word first as a food or medicine that restores strength, then as the establishment of a restaurateur.^[8][12]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 947
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 697
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. restaurant
5. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. restaurant
6. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. restaurant
7. ^ 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. restaurant
8. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1121
9. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. 2, s.v. restaurant
10. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 733
11. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. restaurant
12. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 437