uniformă

Forms

uniformă f (plural uniforme)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French uniforme, the French noun for a prescribed dress;^[2][3][4][1] Tiktin also names German Uniform, and DLR compares German and Russian униформа (uniforma) for this sense.^[2][3][4][1] Wiktionary also allows a learned loan from Latin ūnifōrmis (“having one form”).^[1] The French word is from the same Latin adjective, formed on ūnus (“one”) and fōrma (“form”).^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to 1814, in a text called Întâmplările.^[2] Negulici's dictionary of 1848 explains it as a costume, military dress.^[7]

Semantic evolution

First a soldier's dress, the word was extended to the prescribed clothes of civil servants: Costinescu in 1870 defines it as a coat made to a model laid down for a company or a regiment and, by extension, for some officials.^[8] Today it is chiefly the uniform of soldiers and schoolchildren.^[9][10] Tiktin records an old plural uniformuri, and MDA2 notes that the word was once neuter.^[2][11] A verb uniforma “to dress in uniform” appears in Barcianu.^[11]

Timeline

• 1814 – first record, in Întâmplările.^[2]
• 1836 – the adjective uniform “unvarying”.^[11]
• 1848 – “military dress” in Negulici.^[7]
• 1870 – the uniforms of regiments and officials in Costinescu.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A uniform: clothing made to a set pattern and worn by the members of certain institutions, such as the army or a school.^[12][11][1]

Related words

• uniform
• uniforma
• French uniforme

Usage notes

The same spelling is the feminine singular of the adjective uniform “uniform, unvarying”, a separate borrowing from French uniforme and Latin uniformis recorded from 1836;^[12][11][1] DEX and MDA2 treat the noun as a sense of that adjective.^[12][11][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. unifórmă
3. ^ a b Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. uniform
4. ^ a b Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. uniformă
5. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ 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. uniformă
8. ^ a b Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 660
9. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 583
10. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. uniformă
11. ^ 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, 1377
12. ^ a b c DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1172