sfânt

Forms

sfânt m or n (feminine singular sfântă, masculine plural sfinți, feminine/neuter plural sfinte)^[1] Old texts also have svânt: the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki has it at Psalm 32:21, and the Bucharest Bible of 1688 has it 53 times beside sfânt.^[2][3][4] MDA2 also lists an old variant svent.^[5]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic свѧтъ (svętŭ, “holy”), a word of the Slavonic church language.^[6][4][5][7] Scriban and NODEX write the Slavonic form ⟨sventŭ⟩.^[8][9] The Slavonic adjective glosses Ancient Greek ἅγιος (hágios) in the oldest texts.^[10] It continues Proto-Slavic *svętъ (“holy, sacred”), related to Lithuanian šventas.^[11][12]

Romanian had also kept sanctus as sânt, which the Slavonic word replaced; it survives mainly in saints' names such as ⟨Sâmpietru⟩, ⟨Sângiorz⟩, ⟨Sânnicoară⟩ and ⟨Sântă-Mărie⟩.^[13][14] The Latin word survives south of the Danube as Aromanian sãntu.^[15][16] Wiktionary sees the word as a blend: an earlier ⟨svânt⟩ combining the inherited ⟨sânt⟩ with the Slavonic loan ⟨svent⟩.^[1] Ciorănescu treats sfeti “holy”, from Serbo-Croatian sveti and Bulgarian свет (svet), as its doublet.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki of the early 16th century, both as sfânt and as svânt.^[5][17][2] Tiktin cites a Slavonic–Romanian document of 1512.^[7] In these texts it means “holy” of God, of the Holy Spirit and of holy places: Coresi writes of Duhul sfânt “the Holy Spirit”.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Used as a noun, it means a saint, and in the singular with the article, sfântul “the Saint”, God himself, in many popular phrases: ferit-a sfântul! “God forbid!”, a-l vedea sfântul “to get into trouble” or “to strike lucky”.^[18][5][7] The sfânta sfintelor is the holy of holies of the Temple in Jerusalem, in the Bible of 1688 and Antim.^[4]

Folk usage gives it as an epithet to the sun, the moon and the personified days of the week: sfântul soare.^[6][18] In the plural, sfintele are the iele, the fairies who harm people, mainly in Oltenia, and in a few places the Fates or Death.^[4] As an intensifier, o sfântă de bătaie is “a sound thrashing”.^[18][8] Ciorănescu also records sfântulețul as a folk name of the devil, and a noun sense “chief, a person in power”.^[6] In school slang un sfânt is the mark eight.^[19]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – sfânt and svânt in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[5][2]
• 1512 – a Slavonic–Romanian document.^[7]
• 1570 – in Coresi's psalter.^[20]
• 1649 – sfînt in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[21]
• 1688 – sfânta sfintelor “the holy of holies” in the Bucharest Bible.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. holy: an epithet of God and of those the Church has made saints;^[18][5] (rare) of people, living a pure and devout life: Sfântul Părinte “the Holy Father, the Pope”.^[18][5]
2. Belonging to God, religion or worship; believed to have divine grace, sacred: locurile sfinte “the Holy Land”, Sfântul Mormânt “the Holy Sepulchre”.^[18]
3. Worthy of veneration and respect: o datorie sfântă “a sacred duty”.^[18][9]
4. (popular) An epithet of the sun and other elements of nature, and of the days of the week: Sfântul Soare.^[18]
5. Perfect, infallible; as a noun with de, a superlative: o sfântă de bătaie “a sound beating”.^[18]

Noun

1. (popular, with the article) God: ferit-a sfântul! “God forbid!”, a-l uita sfântul “to linger somewhere too long”.^[18][5]
2. A saint: a person the Church recognises after death as a model of Christian life; also a person who lives a pure and devout life: a sta ca un sfânt “to keep perfectly still”.^[18][1]
3. (popular, feminine plural with the article) The iele, evil fairies.^[18][4]
4. (masculine plural) The small cakes baked for the feast of the Forty Martyrs (mucenici).^[18]

Word family

• sfinți
• sfinție
• sfințit
• preasfințit
• sfințenie
• sfințișor

Related words

• sânt
• Aromanian sãntu
• Old Church Slavonic свѧтъ (svętŭ)

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c 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 32:21
3. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Psaltirea 32:21
4. ^ 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. sfânt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 871
6. ^ a b c d 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. sfînt
7. ^ 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. sfânt
8. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1195
9. ^ a b Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. sfânt
10. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
11. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
12. ^ Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
13. ^ 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. sînt
14. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 7569
15. ^ Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 956
16. ^ Cunia, Tiberius (2008), Dictsiunar a limbãljei armãneascã, Editsii Timpurarã (after T. Papahagi, Ș. Mihăileanu and I. Dalametra; online at dixionline.net), p. 897
17. ^ 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 47:1
18. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1011
19. ^ Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. sfânt
20. ^ 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 14:1
21. ^ 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. sfînt