rotund

Forms

rotund m or n (feminine singular rotundă, masculine plural rotunzi, feminine/neuter plural rotunde)^[1] The older form, still regional, is rătund: Cantemir writes „Pietrii rătunde din vârvul dealului puțină urnire îi trebuie” “a round stone on the top of a hill needs only a small push”.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin retundus (“round”), a variant of Latin rotundus.^{[3][4][5][2][6]} The old form rătund continues it regularly.^[2][1] Tiktin regards the modern form, used since Heliade, as a learned correction after Latin, and Wiktionary describes it either as a borrowing of the classical form or as ⟨rătund⟩ crossed with roată “wheel”.^[2][1] Most other Romance languages also continue the variant: French rond, Spanish redondo, Portuguese redondo and Old Italian ritondo, beside Italian rotondo.^[7][8]

Ciorănescu disagrees: for him the variant is not needed, since the classical form gives ⟨rătund⟩ as forās gave fără and locusta gave lăcustă; and ⟨rotund⟩ is no learned form but the Muntenian change of ⟨ră-⟩ to ⟨ro-⟩, as in porumb from palumbus.^[9] The Latin adjective is related to rota (“wheel”); the variant ⟨retundus⟩ is attested from the 7th century.^[10][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are names in charters: the personal name Rătundul about 1476 and the place name Rătunda in 1517.^[2] Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 has rătund.^[11] MDA2's first record is Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică (1704), with the sense “round”.^[5]

Semantic evolution

The core sense is the shape: round like a circle, a sphere, a disc or a cylinder, and of hills, without ridges or edges.^[3][5] Nicolae Costin wrote that the earth is round, fiind pământul rătund.^[4] From the shape come “plump” of people, “round” of numbers and sums, and “pleasant” of sounds and gestures.^[3][5] The old language used the adverb for speaking plainly, “straight out”.^[5]

The neuter noun means a round figure, and in poetry the globe of the earth.^[12][3] Recent colloquial Romanian has a se da rotund “to show off”, and teenage slang uses rotund for a football.^[13][14]

Timeline

• c. 1476 – the personal name Rătundul.^[2]
• 1517 – the place name Rătunda.^[2]
• 1649 – rătund in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[11]
• 1688 – rătund in the Bucharest Bible.^[15]
• 1704 – Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică.^[5]
• 1825 – rotundu in the Lexicon de la Buda.^[16]

Meanings

Adjective

1. round: shaped like a circle, a sphere or a disc, and (of hills) without ridges or edges.^[3][5][1]
2. (of people or parts of the body) plump, chubby.^[3][1]
3. (of numbers, sums) Without fractions; whole, complete.^[3][1]
4. Rounded off, finished.^[3]

Noun

1. A round figure or surface; a disc or circle.^[3][12]

Word family

• rotunji
• rotunjime
• rotunjitură
• rotunjor

Related words

• roată
• rotondă
• rătund
• Latin rotundus

Usage notes

The adjective has the plurals rotunzi and rotunde; the noun has rotunduri.^[3] A se da rotund “to give oneself airs” is colloquial.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. rotund
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 964
4. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. rotund
5. ^ 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, 729
6. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. rotund
7. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
9. ^ 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. rotund
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b 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. rătund
12. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 3, 779
13. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. rotund
14. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. rotund
15. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. 2 Maccabees 13:5
16. ^ 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. 595