vâna

Forms

vâna (third-person singular present vânează, past participle vânat) 1st conjugation^[1] In the 1953–1993 spelling the word was written vîna.^[1] The first person present was venez in the 16th and 17th centuries and vinez in the 17th and 18th, as in Miron Costin: „Tu vinez cu sacul Pre toți” “you hunt everyone with the sack”.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *vēnō, the active form of Latin vēnor (“to hunt”).^{[3][4][5][1][6]} De Vaan takes the Latin verb as a denominative from a noun or adjective meaning “hunt, searching”, from a root meaning “desire”, while Wiktionary prefers Proto-Indo-European *weyh₁- (“to chase, pursue”).^[7][1]

It survives in Aromanian as avin, with the prefix ⟨a-⟩.^[8][9][3] Papahagi notes that, like other verbs of this class, it is conjugated there without the suffix ⟨-ez⟩.^[8] Megleno-Romanian has the derivative vănătoari.^[10] Its Romance cognates include French vener, Occitan venar and Catalan venar.^[3] The nouns vânat and vânător may continue vēnātus and vēnātor directly.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to the Codicele Voronețean (c. 1563–1583), and Tiktin places it there in 1 Peter 3:1.^[4][2] Coresi's Psalter of 1570 has the past vînară “they hunted”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The literal sense of chasing and killing game is recorded in a document of 1632: „Cine va vîna într-ascuns, să fie dator Porței 12 boi” “whoever hunts in secret shall owe the Porte twelve oxen”.^[12] In the Bucharest Bible Esau goes out to the field ca să vineze vânat for his father.^[2][12] Old texts also used the verb for fishing, for roaming a forest in search of game, and in Church language for winning converts.^[4][13]

Figuratively it means pursuing a person in order to catch them, and chasing an aim greedily: Eminescu writes „ați vânat țintă nebună” “you hunted a mad goal”.^[5][2] In familiar speech it means to get hold of something.^[5][14]

Timeline

• c. 1563–1583 – vâna in the Codicele Voronețean, the first record.^[4][2]
• 1570 – vînară and vînează in Coresi's Psalter.^[11]
• 1632 – vîna “to hunt” in a document.^[12]
• c. 1660 – vînează in a Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.^[15]
• 1688 – ca să vineze vânat in the Bucharest Bible.^[2][16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To hunt: to lie in wait for, chase and catch or kill wild animals or birds.^[5][4]
2. To fish, especially for large fish.^[5]
3. (figurative) To pursue a person in order to catch them, to hound.^[5]
4. (figurative, often pejorative) To chase something greedily and persistently.^[5]
5. (colloquial) To get hold of, to wangle.^[5][14]

Word family

• vânat
• vânătoare
• vânător
• vânătoresc
• vânătorie
• vânătură

Related words

• Aromanian avin
• Latin venor

Usage notes

Vâna is also the articled form of the noun vână “vein”, a word of another origin.^[17]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. vâna
3. ^ a b c d 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. vîna
4. ^ a b c d e Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1432
5. ^ a b c d e f g h DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1187
6. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9186
7. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 181
9. ^ Pascu, Giorge (1925), Dictionnaire étymologique macédoroumain, 2 vols. (I: Les éléments latins et romans; II: Les éléments grecs, turcs, slaves, albanais, germaniques, magyars, néologismes, créations immédiates, obscurs), Iași: Cultura Națională, p. 1, 49
10. ^ Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 322
11. ^ a b Gînsac, Ana-Maria; Ungureanu, Mădălina; Moruz, Alexandru et al., roPsalt: Re-evaluating the Sixteenth Century Romanian Psalters (aligned corpus), Iași: Universitatea „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, https://scriptadacoromanica.ro, p. Ps 58:3
12. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vîna
13. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. vîna
14. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. vâna
15. ^ 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. vînează
16. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gn 27:5
17. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Gn 32:32