vacant

Forms

vacant m or n (feminine singular vacantă, masculine plural vacanți, feminine/neuter plural vacante)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French vacant and Latin vacāns (“being empty”), as DEX, MDA2, DLRLC, DILF and the neologism dictionaries give it;^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Scriban puts the Latin word first,^[7] Wiktionary the French.^[1] The Latin word is the present participle of vacō (“to be empty, be free”).^[8][9][10] French borrowed it from Latin in 1207, first of an office waiting to be filled.^[11]

Graur groups the word with vacanță, from the Latin neuter plural vacantia, and with evacua, from ēvacuō.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

MDA2's first record is from 1831, in G. Pleșoianu's translation of Fénelon's Télémaque, printed at Sibiu.^[3] Its first sense in the dictionaries is that of a post or office without a holder.^[3][12]

Semantic evolution

Costinescu's dictionary of 1870 shows the range the word had then: a vacant bishop's see, a chancery where no one works, an abandoned inheritance, an uninhabited house and free beds in a hospital.^[12] MDA2 records several of these senses as obsolete or now rare: a priest without a parish, unoccupied or disposable land and a free stretch of time.^[3] The standard language keeps two: a post without a holder, and, in law, an inheritance that no heir has claimed.^[2][5]

Timeline

• 1831 – the first record, in Pleșoianu's Telemah.^[3]
• 1870 – Costinescu lists the vacant see, house and hospital bed.^[12]
• 1886 – Barcianu glosses it with German ledig “free”.^[13]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a post or office: without a holder, not occupied; free: un post vacant “a vacancy”.^[2][3][14]
2. (law) Of an inheritance: not claimed by the heirs.^[2][5]
3. (rare) Of land or a place: unoccupied, available.^[3]

Related words

• vacanță
• evacua
• Latin vacō

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1180
3. ^ a b c d e f g Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1404
4. ^ Costăchescu, Adriana; Dincă, Daniela; Dragoste, Ramona; Popescu, Mihaela; Scurtu, Gabriela (2009–2010), Dicționar de împrumuturi lexicale din limba franceză (DILF), 2 vols., Craiova: Universitaria
5. ^ a b c Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România
6. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual
7. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1388
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas
10. ^ a b Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică
11. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
12. ^ a b c Costinescu, Ion (1870), Vocabularu romano-francesu, 2 vols., Bucuresci, p. 2, 671
13. ^ Barcianu, Sava Popovici (1886), Dicționar român-germân și germân-român, revised by D. P. Barcianu, part I: român-germân, Sibiu: Institut tipografic, p. 678
14. ^ Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne