secundă

Forms

secundă f (plural secunde)^[1] Older forms are secund and second (neuter), and regional secuntă and săcunt.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French seconde, as DEX and Wiktionary give it, with German Sekunde and Latin secunda named beside it by MDA2, Tiktin and the neologism dictionaries.^{[4][1][2][3][5]} The unit is named from the Latin phrase for “the second small part”, the division that follows the minute; secundus (“following, second”) is formed on sequor (“to follow”).^[6][7][1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to a manuscript of 1790;^[9] MDA2's first record is Amfilohie Hotiniul's arithmetic printed at Iași in 1795, for the sixtieth part of a minute.^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

The word came in as a term of arithmetic, astronomy and timekeeping: the sixtieth part of a minute of time or of a degree of arc.^[2][9] From the unit of time came the everyday sense “a moment, an instant”, in phrases such as într-o secundă “in a moment” and o secundă! “just a second!”.^[10][4] Music took it for the interval between two neighbouring notes, and fencing for the second guard.^[11][12]

Timeline

• 1790 – the first record, in a manuscript cited by Tiktin.^[3]
• 1795 – a unit of measure in Amfilohie Hotiniul's arithmetic.^[2]
• 1870 – “the sixtieth part of a minute” in Costinescu's dictionary.^[9]
• 1939 – the senses in music and fencing in Scriban's dictionary.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A second: the unit of time equal to the sixtieth part of a minute.^[4][2]
2. By extension, a very short time; a clipă, a moment: Așteaptă o secundă!^[4][2]
3. A unit of angle and arc, the sixtieth part of a minute of arc.^[2][12]
4. (music) The interval between two notes on neighbouring degrees of the scale.^[4]
5. (fencing) The second guard position.^[12][11]

Related words

• secund
• secundar
• Latin secundus

Usage notes

Secundă is also the feminine of the adjective secund “second in rank”, a separate loan from Latin and French recorded from 1799.^[13][4] Din secundă în secundă means “from one moment to the next”, and secundă de secundă “every moment, without stopping”.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 844
3. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. secúndă
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 999
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. secundă
6. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
7. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
8. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
9. ^ a b c Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 498
10. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 89
11. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1184
12. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. secundă
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 843