spiona

Forms

spiona (third-person singular present spionează, past participle spionat), 1st conjugation^[1] The old variant șpiona survives regionally;^[2][3][4] MDA2 also records spioni, șpioni and spihoni.^[2][3][4] Șincai and the Lexicon de la Buda conjugate it with -esc: „ca să spionească” “so as to spy”.^[5][2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from German spionieren, also borrowed from Italian spionare, with the French verb espionner as a further model.^[6][7][1] Ciorănescu derives it from the French verb.^[8] MDA2, Tiktin and the DLR instead treat it as formed in Romanian on the noun spion (“spy”).^[3][2][5]

The noun goes back to spione, an augmentative of spia (“lookout”), from spiare (“to spy out”), which Italian took from a Germanic verb related to spehōn.^[9] The German verb is formed Spion with the suffix -ieren.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the Lexicon de la Buda of 1825.^[2] The DLR's first quotation is from Gheorghe Șincai's chronicle, where someone wins favour at court so as to spy out through him the secrets of the court of Vienna.^[5] MDA2 dates this record by the 1853 edition.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The verb first meant gathering military and political secrets for another power: in Șincai envoys are sent to the Poles with fair peace terms, in truth only to spy.^[5] By 1841 it was also used of watching a person in secret, to find out their thoughts and intentions.^[5] From this sense came that of looking at someone furtively, and a reciprocal use, a se spiona “to spy on each other”.^[6][4]

Timeline

• 1767 – the noun spion “spy”.^[10]
• 1825 – spiona in the Lexicon de la Buda, with the present in -esc.^[2]
• 1841 – the sense “to watch someone in secret”.^[5]
• 1853 – Șincai's chronicle printed, with the DLR's first quotation.^[3][5]
• 1862 – spiona “to spy on, watch furtively” in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To spy: to gather secret information on a state in secret and pass it to another state.^[6][3]
2. (transitive) To watch someone in secret in order to report what one learns; reflexive, to spy on each other.^[6][3]
3. (transitive) To look at or follow someone furtively.^[6]

Related words

• spion
• spionaj

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. spiona
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 956
4. ^ a b c Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 194
5. ^ 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. spiona
6. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1041
7. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. spiona
8. ^ 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. spion
9. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
10. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. spion
11. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich