totalitate

Forms

totalitate f (plural totalități)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French totalité (“totality”), a neologism of the 19th century.^[2][3][4][1] The French word goes back to Latin totalitas, and it is itself formed on total with the suffix -ité.^[1] Within Romanian it matches total with the suffix -itate, and Scriban names both the Romanian adjective and the French noun as its sources.^[1][5] Pontbriant marked it as a Latin word in 1862.^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dictionary to list it is Pontbriant's of 1862, which gives French totalité and en entier “wholly” for the noun and the phrase.^[6] MDA2 dates the first record in a text to 1865, in Hasdeu's Ion-Vodă cel cumplit, where it means the whole of an army.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

The word has meant the whole number of the things or beings in question, and the whole that results from joining its parts, since the 19th century.^[3][7] Laurian and Massim defined it in 1871 as the quality and state of being total, with examples such as the whole of an inheritance.^[8] DLR records the older native synonym totime, and Damé still sent the reader from totalitate to totime in the 1890s.^[7][9] The phrase în totalitate “wholly, entirely” is an adverbial use.^[2][5]

Timeline

• 1862 – listed in Pontbriant's dictionary.^[6]
• 1865 – Hasdeu's Ion-Vodă cel cumplit, MDA2's first record in a text.^[2]
• 1869 – Barițiu gives it among the Romanian equivalents of Hungarian mindenség “the whole”.^[10]
• 1870 – Costinescu's dictionary, with French totalité.^[11]
• 1871 – defined in Laurian and Massim's dictionary.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The complete number of the things or beings in question; the whole set of things or beings bound together.^[3][7]
2. A whole, with nothing left out.^[3][2]

Related words

• total
• tot
• totime
• French totalité

Usage notes

În totalitate and în totalitatea lui (or ei) mean “entirely, as a whole”.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 1245
3. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1133
4. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. totalitate
5. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1333
6. ^ a b c Pontbriant, Raoul de (1862), Dictiunaru romano-francesu, Bucuresci: A. Ulrich / Göttingen: Dieterich, p. 744
7. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. totalitate
8. ^ a b Laurian, A. T.; Massim, I. C. (1871–1876), Dictionariulu limbei romane, 2 vols., Bucuresci: Noua Typographia a Laboratoriloru Romani, p. s.v. totalitate
9. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. totalitate
10. ^ Barițiu, George (1869), Dictionariu unguresc-romanescu, Brașov, p. 377
11. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 625