tun

Forms

tun n (plural tunuri)^[1] In the sense “thunder” old texts have the plurals tune and tunure: Varlaam writes „În tunure și în fulgere și în cutremur de pământ” “in thunders and lightnings and earthquake”.^[2][3][4]

Etymology

The DLR, MDA2 and Graur take it as a back-formation from Romanian tuna (“to thunder”).^[2][4][5] The verb is from Latin tonō (“to thunder”).^[6][7] Ciorănescu and Tiktin give this view or the Latin noun discussed below.^[6][3]

The DEX, Șăineanu, Scriban and Wiktionary derive it from Latin tonus, which is τόνος (tónos, “tension, tone”), with the sense “thunderclap” of its Romance cognates.^{[8][9][10][1]} Tiktin compares Dalmatian tun and Italian tuono “thunder”.^[3] Graur objects that the Latin noun survives in the Romance languages only as a learned loan;^[5] Seneca found the noun with the sense “thunder” in a writer of the 1st century BC as an archaic word beside tonitrum, and Graur takes both the Latin word and the Romanian one as made separately from the verb.^[5] ton “tone” is a doublet, borrowed through French.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, with the sense “thunder”: „De glasul tunrului tău spământă-se” “at the voice of thy thunder they were afraid” (Psalm 103).^[4][2][3]

Semantic evolution

“Thunder” was the old sense, which survives in popular speech and in folk belief: the archangel Gabriel is said to carry the stone and rule the thunder.^[2][3] When firearms came, the cannon was named after its noise;^[3] Tiktin notes that the oldest cannons were called “thunder guns” in German.^[3] Miron Costin plays on both senses in a saying: he who is meant to die by a cannonball dies by a thunderbolt.^[3] The DLR quotes the cannon sense from the 17th-century chronicles on, and Klein's dictionary of 1801 still gives both senses.^[2][11]

After a verb or an adjective tun became an intensifier: înghețat tun “frozen hard”, sănătos tun “hale and hearty”, doarme tun “sleeps like a log”, beat tun “dead drunk”.^[3][8] Graur thinks înghețat tun came first and meant water frozen so hard that cannons could cross it, the other phrases being imitations of it.^[5] In slang since the 1990s tun is a big illicit coup, a swindle that brings huge profits: a da un tun.^[12][13]

Timeline

• c. 1500–1520 – tun “thunder” in the Psaltirea Hurmuzaki, the first record.^[4][2]
• 1660 – tunul glosses Slavonic дѣло “cannon” in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[14]
• 1801 – tun glossed Latin tonitru “thunder” and tormentum “piece of artillery” in Klein's dictionary.^[11]
• 1825 – the Lexicon de la Buda gives both “thunder” and “cannon”.^[15]
• 1870 – Costinescu gives only “cannon”.^[16]
• 1990s – the slang a da un tun “to pull off a big swindle” in the press.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cannon, a piece of artillery that fires shells over a long distance; by extension any artillery weapon.^[8][1]
2. Tun electronic: an electron gun, the part of an electron tube that produces a fine beam of electrons.^[8]
3. (archaic and popular) thunder, a thunderclap.^[8][4][1]
4. (slang) A large illicit operation that brings huge profits.^[13][12]

Adverb

1. (after a verb or an adjective) Very, hard, thoroughly: înghețat tun “frozen hard”, sănătos tun “hale and hearty”.^[8][3]

Word family

• tunar

Related words

• tuna
• tunet
• ton

Usage notes

A scăpa ca din tun means “to get away fast”, and poți să dai cu tunul is said of someone sleeping so deeply that nothing wakes them, or of a deserted place.^[8] MDA2 and the DLR list a second tun, a variant of turn.^[4][2]

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. tun
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. tun
4. ^ 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, 1299
5. ^ a b c d Graur, Alexandru (1963), Etimologii romînești, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. s.v. tun
6. ^ a b 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. tuna
7. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 165
8. ^ a b c d e f g DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1153
9. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 671
10. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1355
11. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 460
12. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. tun
13. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. tun
14. ^ Ungureanu, Mădălina; Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Moruz, Alexandru (eds.), eRomLex: The First Romanian Bilingual Dictionaries (17th century), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. s.v. tunul
15. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 726
16. ^ Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 649