stație

Forms

stație f (plural stații)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin statiō (“a standing, post, station”), with French station and German Station as further models, as the DLR, MDA2 and NODEX give it.^[2][3][4] DEX 2009 names French and Latin.^[5] Tiktin takes it from Latin, partly through other languages, and compares Polish stacya and the French word.^[6] Scriban gave the Polish word alone, for the old sense “halting place”.^[7] The old variant stanție comes from Russian станция (stancija).^[2][3]

The Latin noun is formed on the verb stō (“to stand”) with the suffix -tiō.^[8] The French word is a learned borrowing from Latin of about 1170.^[9] Graur places it in the family of sta, the Romanian verb inherited from the same Latin verb.^[10] The form stațiune, built on the stem of the Latin oblique cases, is a variant of the same word, now used for some senses.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Grigore Ureche's chronicle of Moldavia (c. 1640), in the sense “military quarters, a place of supply for the army”: envoys asked Stephen the Great „să-i gătează stație de hrană de oaste” “to prepare him quarters with food for the army”.^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

The old senses were military: quarters, a camp, a starting place of an expedition, a post.^[3][2] From them came “a halt, a resting place” and, in the early 19th century, the posting station where horses were changed: a document of 1818 has stanții de poștă, and 1829 texts have stații and stănții.^[2] In the Banat and Transylvania ștație also meant the distance between two such stations.^[3][2]

The modern sense, a fixed stop of a public vehicle and a railway station, grew from the posting station.^[3] It also became a technical term: a research or broadcasting station, a space station.^[5][11] The variant stațiune took the senses “resort” and “posture of the body”, and in the Christian rite a station of the Cross; in Orthodox custom a halt of a funeral procession at a crossroads is also a stație.^[5][3]

Timeline

• c. 1640 – stație “quarters for the army” in Ureche's chronicle.^[6][2]
• 1818 – stanții de poștă “posting stations”.^[2]
• 1829 – stații of the posting road, and the form stănții.^[2]
• 1870 – Costinescu glosses stație and stațiune with French station.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A stop: a fixed point on the route of a public vehicle where passengers get on and off and goods are loaded.^[5][1]
2. A place in a town where taxis or other public vehicles wait for passengers; a rank.^[5][3]
3. A railway station.^[3][1]
4. (dated) A halt, a stop on a journey;^[5] (regional) a halt of a funeral procession on its way to the cemetery.^[5]
5. A set of buildings and installations for observations, research or technical operations: stație meteorologică, stație telefonică;^[5][4] stație spațială “space station”.^[5][4]

Related words

• stațiune
• staționa
• sta

Usage notes

The variant stațiune is now used mainly for a resort (stațiune balneară) and a research station.^[5] The popular plural is stății.^[3][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. stație
3. ^ 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, 974
4. ^ a b c Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. stație
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1047
6. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. stație
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1238
8. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 95
11. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. stație
12. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 553