umor

Forms

umor n (uncountable)^[1] The spelling humor was common into the 20th century: Bacovia wrote „O, țară tristă, plină de humor” “O sad land, full of humour”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French humour, with other models named beside it.^[3][2][4] The DEX and the DILF give humeur as well, comparing English humour;^[3][5] the DLR and the MDA2 give German Humor beside the French word;^[2][4] Tiktin names only the French ⟨humeur⟩;^[6] Marcu adds the English word and Latin hūmor.^[7] Gabinschi calls it a European loan of English origin.^[8]

The English word comes from Old French humor,^[1] and in English the word came to mean a cheerful temper and then the gift of showing the comic side of things;^[9] French borrowed it back in 1725 and 1745.^[9] The German word was borrowed from Latin in the 16th century and took the English sense in the 18th.^[10] The Latin word is a form of ūmor (“moisture, fluid”), from ūmeō (“to be moist”); medieval medicine used it for the four humours of the body that were thought to make a person's temper.^[11] Its doublet is umoare “humour of the body”.^[8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to 1840, with the senses “humour” and “mood, temper”.^[6][2] The first quotation in a text, before 1864, speaks of “more humour and less satire”.^[2][4]

Semantic evolution

From the 1870s the word names the gift of joking and irony under a serious face: a text of 1870 speaks of the humour and cheer that shone from a man's eyes, and Gherea found the seeds of humour in Conu Leonida.^[2] By extension it means good cheer.^[3][2] In aesthetics it became a category of the comic.^[3][7] Marcu records umor negru “black humour”.^[7] The phrases a avea simțul umorului “to have a sense of humour” and a nu avea simțul umorului “not to see a joke” are in the MDA2.^[4]

Timeline

• 1840 – first record.^[6]
• before 1864 – “humour” in a literary text.^[4][2]
• 1870 – of a person's cheerful wit.^[2]
• 1886 – Barcianu glosses it German Stimmung, Laune, Humor.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. humour: a bent for jokes and irony hidden under a serious face; its expression in speech or writing: Povestea lui e plină de umor.^[3][4]
2. By extension, good cheer, fun.^[3][4]
3. An aesthetic category of the comic, which stresses the absurdity of situations taken as normal.^[3][4]
4. umor negru: black humour.^[7]

Related words

• umoare

Usage notes

Two other umor are only variants of other words: a masculine umor for umoare “humour of the body” and a neuter umor for omor “murder”.^[4][2][6] The word has no plural in the DEX;^[3][13] Scriban gives umoruri.^[3][13]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. umor
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1170
4. ^ 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, 1370
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 d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. umor
7. ^ a b c d Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. umor
8. ^ a b Gabinschi, Marcu (2001), Dicționar de dublete etimologice ale limbii române, 2nd ed., Chișinău: Litera, p. 177
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter
11. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
12. ^ Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 672
13. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1376