strategie

Forms

strategie f (plural strategii)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French stratégie, one of the military terms Romanian took from French in the 19th century.^{[2][3][4][5][1]} Scriban, writing in 1939, preferred to derive it directly from the Greek word.^[6]

The French word goes back through Latin strategia to Ancient Greek στρατηγία (stratēgía, “office of a general, command”), from στρατηγός (stratēgós, “general”), a compound of στρατός (stratós, “army”) and ἄγω (ágō, “to lead”).^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the newspaper Curierul Românesc of 1830, in a passage that names it beside tactics and the history of campaigns.^[3][4] Its sense there is the art of planning and leading a war.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Through the 19th century the word stayed a military term: Bălcescu wrote of defensive war as a part of strategy, and the dictionaries of Costinescu (1870) and Barcianu (1886) gloss it as the art of commanding armies.^[4][7][8] Ion Ghica already used it beside politics for a general plan of action.^[4] From this came the figurative sense of a skilful plan in any field.^[4][6][3]

In the communist period the dictionaries added a political sense, the general line of the revolutionary struggle at a given stage.^[9][10][11] Later dictionaries record a sense in game theory, a player's plan of moves for every situation, and the phrase strategie economică for the planning of economic objectives.^[3][2]

Timeline

• 1830 – first record, in Curierul Românesc.^[3][4]
• 1870 – in Costinescu's dictionary, glossed as the art of commanding armies.^[7]
• 1886 – in Barcianu's Romanian–German dictionary.^[8]
• 1939 – Scriban records the figurative sense “a skilful manoeuvre”.^[6]
• 2009 – DEX lists the phrase strategie economică.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. strategy: the part of the art of war that deals with preparing, planning and conducting a war and its campaigns.^[2][3]
2. The military discipline that studies large operations and prepares the plans of battles.^[3]
3. (mathematics) In game theory, a player's plan of moves that takes every possible situation into account.^[3]
4. (figurative) The skill of combining all available means and circumstances to reach a goal; such a plan: o strategie electorală “an electoral strategy”.^[3][12]
5. strategie economică: the setting of economic objectives and the planning of the actions needed to reach them.^[2]

Related words

• strateg
• French stratégie

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1056
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, 999
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. strategie
5. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria
6. ^ a b c Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1248
7. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 563
8. ^ 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. 613
9. ^ Breban, Vasile (1980), Dicționar al limbii române contemporane de uz curent, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 577
10. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România
11. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
12. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. strategie