stadiu

Forms

stadiu n (plural stadii)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin stadium, taken up again in the 19th century under the influence of French stade and German Stadium.^[2][3][4] The dictionaries give different orders: the DLR, MDA2 and NODEX put Latin first, the DEX and DILF French, and Wiktionary names French alone.^{[2][5][6][7][1]} The old sense, a Greek measure of length, is from Latin, as the DLRLV and Tiktin say.^[8][9]

The Latin word is borrowed from Ancient Greek στάδιον (stádion), a measure of length and the racecourse of that length.^[10][1] The French word continues the Latin: its learned form, recorded from 1530, replaced Old French estade.^[11] The modern sense "stage of development" follows German, where the word has meant a stage, above all of an illness, since the 18th century;^[12][13] Pfeifer points to the medical Latin stadium morbi.^[12][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

The plural stadii is in the Bucharest Bible of 1688, in the Emmaus story (Luke 24:13), as a measure of distance; the form could belong to the variant stadie as well.^[14] Tiktin quotes Dosoftei's lives of the saints for the same measure: „Era departe de călugări zeace stadii” “he was ten stadia away from the monks”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Until the 19th century the word was the ancient measure of about 125 paces, as the old texts, Negulici in 1848 and Pontbriant in 1862 define it.^[8][15][16] Șincai used the plural stadiuri: „se lungea stadiuri 17 și se lățea stadiuri 7” “it stretched 17 stadia in length and 7 in width”.^[2] A second sense, the racecourse of the Greeks, appears in the 19th century and is now obsolete, replaced by stadion.^[2]

The sense "phase of a process" came through medicine: an early medical handbook speaks of the plague in its first stage, and Costinescu in 1870 gives the course of a disease and the bouts of a fever.^[2][17] Barcianu in 1886 has the German senses "period, course of time, career".^[18] Today this is the main sense: a distinct stage in the development of a process.^[6][3]

Timeline

• 1688 – the plural stadii, a measure of distance, in the Bucharest Bible.^[14]
• 1737 – the variant stad in a Moldavian text.^[8]
• 1848 – Negulici defines it as a measure of 125 geometric paces.^[15]
• 1870 – Costinescu adds the course of a disease.^[17]
• 1886 – Barcianu gives “period, course, career”.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. A stage or phase: each of the distinct periods in the development of a process or a natural phenomenon; etapă, fază.^[6][3][1]
2. (medicine) Each of the phases of a disease.^[3][2]
3. (historical) The stade, an ancient Greek measure of length of about 125 paces, between 147 and 192 metres.^[6][3]

Related words

• stadion
• stadie
• Latin stadium

Usage notes

The plural is stadii; the DLR records an old stadiuri and the rare variants stadium and ștadiu.^[2][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. stadiu
3. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 969
4. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. stadiu
5. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. stadiu
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1045
7. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria, p. s.v. stadiu
8. ^ a b c Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 270
9. ^ a b Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. stadiu
10. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 874
13. ^ a b Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
14. ^ a b Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Luke 24:13
15. ^ a b Negulici, I. D. (1848), Vocabular romînesc de toate vorbele streine întroduse pînă acum în limba romînească și de toate cuvintele ce s-ar mai putea introduce încă, București, p. s.v. stadiu
16. ^ Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 697
17. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 549
18. ^ a b Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 604