savant

Forms

savant m (plural savanți)^[1] As an adjective it has the feminine savantă and the plurals savanți and savante.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French savant (“learned; scholar”).^{[2][3][4][5][1]} The French word is the old present participle of savoir (“to know”), used as an adjective from about 1120.^[6] Scriban already explained it this way in 1939.^[7] Graur traces it to Latin sapiēns, the present participle of sapiō (“to have taste; to be wise”), and puts it in one family with the Romanian neologisms savoare, savura and insipid.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the journal Isis of 1859, of a learned professor who had found a fossil skeleton.^[4][5]

Semantic evolution

In Romanian, as in French, the word is both an adjective, “learned, erudite”, and a noun, “scholar, scientist”.^[2][9] The adjective spread from people to their works and to anything showing great skill, as in operă savantă “a learned work” or societate savantă “a learned society”.^[7][2] In linguistics a cuvânt savant is a word borrowed recently from Greek or Latin, or made of Greek or Latin elements.^[10][4]

Romanian formed the noun savantlâc “erudition” with the Turkish-derived suffix -lâc.^[3] The press of the communist period joined it to other nouns: savant-atomist “atomic scientist” in 1962 and savant-patriot in 1972.^[11]

Timeline

• 1859 – savantul profesor in the journal Isis, the first record.^[4][5]
• 1870 – Costinescu's dictionary has it as adjective and noun.^[9]
• 1893 – savantul nostru critic Gherea in a letter quoted by the DLR.^[5]
• 1962 – savant-atomist in the press.^[11]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having wide and deep knowledge, learned, erudite: un profesor savant.^[2][7]
2. Showing much knowledge, or by extension great art and skill: o lucrare savantă.^[2][4]
3. (linguistics) Of words: borrowed from Greek or Latin, or made of Greek or Latin elements; bookish.^[10]

Noun

1. A scholar or scientist, a person of wide and deep knowledge who does creative work in science: Savanta a primit un premiu internațional.^[2][1]

Word family

• savantlâc

Related words

• savoare
• savura

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 978
3. ^ a b 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. savant
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 763
5. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. savant
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1158
8. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. no. 212
9. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 472
10. ^ a b Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. savant
11. ^ a b Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. savant