vârstă

Forms

vârstă f (plural vârste)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Church Slavonic връста (vrŭsta, “age, lifetime”).^{[2][3][4][1][5]} Ciorănescu cites Cihac and Conev and compares Bulgarian връст (vrǎst, “age”) and Slovene vrsta (“line”).^[4][6] The Slavonic word continues Proto-Slavic *vьrsta (“row, line, age, kind”).^[7][1] The BER and Vasmer link it with the verb “to turn”, its first meaning being the turn of the plough at the end of a furrow; from the furrow came “equal, alike”, of years and age.^[8][6]

The word survives south of the Danube: Aromanian vîrstă and Megleno-Romanian vrăstă.^[4][9][10] Papahagi derives the Aromanian word from Slavonic as well, and Capidan the Megleno-Romanian one from Bulgarian.^[9][10] The BER adds Albanian vërsë “age” as another Balkan loan.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2 dates the first record to Coresi's Carte de învățătură of 1581, and Tiktin to the Palia de la Orăștie of 1581–1582, at Genesis 50:26.^[3][11] The sense is already “age, the time lived since birth”.^[3][11]

Semantic evolution

Old phrases used the word for the age of majority: de vârstă “of age, adult”, nu de vârstă “under age”, Cantemir's nevârsta “minority”, în toată vârsta “fully grown”.^[11][3] Dosoftei writes that Moses „sosi la vârstă de 40 de ani” “reached the age of forty”.^[11] The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use it to render Slavonic съвръстникъ “person of the same age”.^[12]

The meaning widened to a stage of life (vârsta a treia “old age, retirement”), the age required for a right, and the ages of the world.^[2][13] Vârsta de mijloc was an old name for the Middle Ages, and geology uses the word for the smallest division of geological time.^[2]

Timeline

• 1581 – vârstă in Coresi's Carte de învățătură.^[3]
• 1581–1582 – in the Palia de la Orăștie.^[11]
• 1649 – Mardarie's lexicon uses it for Slavonic “contemporary”.^[12]
• 1688 – frequent in the Bucharest Bible.^[14]
• 1770 – the regional vârstă “stripe” first recorded.^[3][15]

Meanings

Noun

1. age: the time from a being's birth to a given moment; the number of years that expresses it;^[2][3] în vârstă “elderly”.^[2][3]
2. A stage of life marked by a phase of development;^[2] vârsta a treia “the time after retirement”.^[2]
3. The age required to enjoy certain civil or political rights.^[2][3]
4. (obsolete) vârsta de mijloc: the Middle Ages.^[2]
5. (geology) The smallest division of geological time, in which the layers of a stage were laid down.^[2]

Word family

• vârstnic
• vârstnicie

Related words

• vârsta
• învârsta
• Aromanian vîrstă

Usage notes

A regional vârstă², also vrâstă, means a stripe or band of another colour in a fabric or in a bird's feathers, and in Transylvania a bunch of flowers.^[2][3][16] DEX, MDA2 and the DLR take it from Serbo-Croatian vrsta, a separate borrowing, while Ciorănescu treats age and stripe as senses of one word from Slavonic.^{[2][3][15][4]} It is first recorded in 1770, in a description of pheasants „vârstați în trii vârste” “striped with three stripes”.^[15][3] The verb vârsta “to stripe; to alternate” belongs with it.^[17] For vârstă¹ “age” DEX gives a regional variant vrâstă, and Scriban calls vârstă the western form and vrâstă the eastern.^[2][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 k l m DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1189
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1440
4. ^ 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. vârstă
5. ^ Kurz, Josef; Hauptová, Zoe (eds.) (1958–1997), Slovník jazyka staroslověnského / Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae, 4 vols. + supplements, Praha: Academia; digital ed. gorazd.org
6. ^ a b Vasmer, Max (1964–1973), Ètimologičeskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, transl. and suppl. by O. N. Trubačev, 4 vols., Moskva: Progress
7. ^ Derksen, Rick (2008), Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 4, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b Georgiev, Vladimir I. et al. (eds.) (1971–), Bălgarski etimologičen rečnik, Sofija: Izdatelstvo na Bălgarskata akademija na naukite, p. 1, 189
9. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1117
10. ^ a b Capidan, Theodor (1935), Meglenoromânii III: Dicționar meglenoromân, București: Academia Română, p. 331
11. ^ 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. vârstă
12. ^ a b 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. vârstă
13. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1415
14. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ruth 1:12
15. ^ a b c Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vârstă
16. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 687
17. ^ Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. vârsta