sirenă

Forms

sirenă f (plural sirene)^[1] Old texts have sirină, as in Dosoftei and in Critil: „Sirinele... le schimbă în femei înțelepte” “he turns the Sirens into wise women”.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French sirène, with other models beside it.^[5][1] MDA2 gives Modern Greek σειρήν (seirín), Latin sīrēn, the French word and German Sirene, and the DLR names the same four.^[3][2] Tiktin gives Modern Greek, Latin and Italian sirena, and DEX 2009 French, Italian and Latin.^[4][5] Wiktionary names French alone.^[1]

The French word is a 1377 refashioning of Old French sereine (late 11th century), borrowed from Late Latin sīrēna, from the Latin word, from Ancient Greek Σειρήν (Seirḗn).^[6][7] Beekes calls the Greek word of unknown origin; a link with σειρά (seirá, “rope, cord”), “the one who ensnares”, has been proposed, while Chantraine favoured a Pre-Greek origin because of the suffix ⟨-ήν⟩.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is from about 1660, a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon in which the plural sirene glosses Slavonic сирены.^[4][9] MDA2 cites Dosoftei's Molitvelnic as the first record, and Cantemir has sirenele in the Istoria ieroglifică (1705).^[3][2]

Semantic evolution

For two centuries the word meant only the creature of Greek myth, a woman with the legs and wings of a bird, later with a fish's tail, who lured sailors to their death by her singing.^[2][3] From it came the figurative “seductive woman”, already in Costinescu (1870) and Barcianu (1886), and the phrase de sirenă “enchanting”.^[10][11][3]

The technical senses match those of French sirène, which from 1820 named acoustic devices: an instrument that measures the pitch of a sound, then a signal giving loud rising and falling tones.^[12] Șăineanu and Scriban already record the steam whistle of ships, locomotives and factories, and Scriban the laboratory instrument.^[13][14] In zoology the word names an eel-like amphibian.^[14][3]

Timeline

• c. 1660 – sirene in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[4][9]
• 1705 – sirenele in Cantemir's Istoria ieroglifică.^[2]
• 1870 – “seductive woman” in Costinescu's dictionary.^[10]
• 1929 – the signalling device in Șăineanu's dictionary.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A siren: a device worked by steam or compressed air that gives very loud sounds, used for signals in factories, shipping and alarms; also the sound it gives: a sunat sirena “the siren went off”.^[5][3]
2. A laboratory instrument, a disc with holes through which air is blown, used to determine the pitch of a sound.^[5][3]
3. (Greek mythology) A Siren, a fabulous creature with a woman's body and a bird's legs and wings, later a fish's tail, who lured sailors to their death by singing; a mermaid.^[5][1]
4. (figurative) A seductive woman.^[5][3]
5. (zoology) An eel-shaped amphibian.^[3][14]

Related words

• French sirène
• Ancient Greek Σειρήν (Seirḗn)

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. sirenă
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 901
4. ^ 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. sirenă
5. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1023
6. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Beekes, Robert S. P. (2010), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, with the assistance of Lucien van Beek, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 10, Leiden; Boston: Brill
9. ^ 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. sirene
10. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 524
11. ^ Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 588
12. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
13. ^ a b Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 595
14. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1206