scaun

Forms

scaun n (plural scaune)^[1] In the Banat, in Transylvania and among the Romanians of Serbia the word also has the form scamn.^[2][3] Other regional forms recorded by MDA2 are scand, scant, scăuan and scoamn.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin scamnum (“stool, bench”).^[2][4][5][1] The word survives in all four branches: Aromanian scamnu, Megleno-Romanian scand and Istro-Romanian scånd.^[2][6][7][8] Its Romance cognates include Italian scanno, Occitan escan, Spanish escaño and Portuguese escanho.^[2][9] Albanian shkëmb has the same Latin source.^[1]

The change of the Latin group /mn/ to /un/ is not regular, and the sources explain it in different ways.^[2] Wiktionary compares daună from damnum (“loss”).^[1] Tiktin started from a variant *scabnum influenced by scabellum (“low stool”), and Graur from an original /b/.^[2] Ciorănescu objects that the regional form scamn would then require the two forms to have lived side by side, and prefers a change inside Romanian.^[2] He points to the occasional confusion of /mn/ with /vn/ and /bn/ in Romanian: râvni beside râmni, schimnic beside schivnic, pivniță beside pimniță, and the place name Râmnic from Old Church Slavonic рꙑбьникъ (rybĭnikŭ, “fishpond”).^[2] The Megleno-Romanian form arose by dissimilation of /mn/ to /md/.^[2][1]

The Latin word is perhaps related to Sanskrit स्कम्भ (skambhá, “prop, support, pillar”).^[10][11][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first records are in the 16th-century psalters.^[12] The Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, written in the early 16th century, has the articled form scaunul, and Coresi's Psalter of 1570 has scaun.^[13][14][4] The Slavonic–Romanian lexicons of the 17th century use it to gloss Slavonic престолъ (prestolŭ, “throne”) and сѣдалище “seat”.^[15]

Semantic evolution

Beside the piece of furniture, the word meant from the old texts on the throne of a ruler, then the reign itself.^[12][16] Varlaam's Cazania says that the Son of Man will sit „pre scaunul măriei sale” “on the throne of his glory”.^[12] From the throne came the residence of the prince and the capital: a charter of 1817 calls Bucharest „scaunul domnii mele” “the seat of my reign”, and Bălcescu wrote that Târgoviște had long been „scaunul țării” “the capital of the country”.^[12]

In the old laws the word meant a court of justice and its jurisdiction.^[12][2] In Transylvania the administrative districts of the Saxons and the Szeklers were called scaune, and the Lexicon de la Buda of 1825 gives the council of a town as a further sense.^[3][17][16] A figurative “seat” of reason gave om cu scaun la cap “a sensible person”.^[12][2] Technical senses name the workbench of the cooper and the wheelwright, the butcher's block, a support in many tools and the bridge of a violin.^[2][3] A merge la scaun “to go to stool” gave the sense “evacuation of the bowels”.^[18][2]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – scaunul in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[4][13]
• 1570 – scaun in Coresi's Psalter.^[14]
• 1648 – scaunele “the seats” of the dove sellers in the New Testament of 1648.^[5]
• 1649 – glosses Slavonic “throne” in Mardarie's lexicon.^[15]
• 1688 – scaunul occurs more than a hundred times in the Bucharest Bible.^[19]
• 1817 – “capital, residence of the prince” in a charter.^[12]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda gives the seat, the throne, a town council and the Saxon and Szekler districts.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. A chair or stool: a piece of furniture, with or without a back, on which one person sits: Adu un scaun la masă. “Bring a chair to the table.” Scaun electric: the electric chair.^[16][4][1]
2. (figurative) A seat held as a member of an assembly.^[16]
3. A throne; by extension the authority of a monarch, the reign.^[16][1]
4. The residence of a ruler or a government; a capital;^[16][1] Sfântul Scaun is the Holy See.^[16][1]
5. (historical) An administrative district of the Saxons and Szeklers of Transylvania.^[16][3]
6. (regional) A workbench of various trades; the butcher's block.^[2][3][1]
7. A support or rest in tools and machines; the bridge of a violin.^[2][3]
8. An evacuation of the bowels; diarrhoea.^[2][1]

Word family

• scăunel
• scăunoaie
• înscăuna
• descăuna
• scăunaș

Related words

• Aromanian scamnu
• Latin scamnum

Usage notes

Om cu scaun la cap means “a sensible person”.^[12][20] A sta între două scaune means “to be in an unsure position, to waver”.^[20][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p 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. scaun
3. ^ a b c d e f Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1166
4. ^ 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, 791
5. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. scaun
6. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 926
7. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 259
8. ^ Kovačec, August (1998), Istrorumunjsko-hrvatski rječnik (s gramatikom i tekstovima), Pula
9. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7649
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e f g h Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. scaun
13. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 10:4
14. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 9:4
15. ^ 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. scaun
16. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 985
17. ^ a b 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. 617
18. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 479
19. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gen 41:40
20. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. scaun