rucsac

Forms

rucsac n (plural rucsacuri)^[1] It is also written ruksac; the regional variants are rucțac, rupsac, ruzac and rubzac.^[2][3] The plural is rucsacuri, regionally also rucsace.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from German Rucksack (“backpack”).^[4][2][3][1] The German word comes from the Alpine dialects, first in Switzerland in the 16th century, and became standard in the 19th; it is a compound of the Upper German form of Rücken (“back”), without umlaut, and Sack (“sack”).^[5][1] English rucksack was borrowed from the same German word.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 and the DLR take the first record from G. Călinescu's novel Scrinul negru (1960), where an old woman closes a convoy „cu un rucsac în spinare” “with a rucksack on her back”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its single sense, a bag carried on the back by hikers and tourists; dictionaries give the older raniță as a synonym.^[4][2] The regional forms such as rupsac and rubzac come from the Romanian linguistic atlas and show the word adapted in the spoken language.^[3]

Timeline

• 1960 – first record, in G. Călinescu's Scrinul negru.^[2][3]
• 1961 – the spelling ruksac in a magazine quotation of the DLR.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A rucksack, a backpack: a bag with straps carried on the back, especially by hikers; raniță.^[4][2][1]

Related words

• sac
• raniță
• German Rucksack

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 732
3. ^ 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. rucsac
4. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 965
5. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter