vecin

Forms

vecin m or n (feminine singular vecină, masculine plural vecini, feminine/neuter plural vecine)^[1] MDA2 records a regional variant vicin;^[2][3] Cantemir writes of „împărății mari și vicine” “great and neighbouring empires”.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Late Latin vēcīnus, a variant of vīcīnus (“neighbouring; neighbour”), which the Romanian dictionaries and REW reconstruct with /e/ in the first syllable.^{[1][4][2][5][3]} The Latin adjective is a derivative of vīcus (“village”).^[6][7]

Aromanian has vițin and Istro-Romanian vecin.^[4][8] The Romance cognates include Dalmatian vicain, Italian vicino, Occitan vezin, French voisin, Spanish vecino and Portuguese vizinho.^[4][9] The abstract noun vecinătate, Aromanian viținătate, may continue vīcīnitās directly, according to Ciorănescu and Papahagi.^[4][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the first record to a document of 1482.^[10] The first Romanian texts are Coresi's Psalter of 1570, with vecinii “the neighbours”, and the Psaltirea Scheiană (c. 1573–1578).^[11][2]

Semantic evolution

Besides the neighbour next door, the old religious texts use the word for one's fellow man, as in a manuscript of 1607: „Să nu fii mărturie strâmbă vecinului tău” “do not bear false witness against your neighbour”.^[10] In Moldavia the noun also named a peasant bound to a landlord's estate: Ureche writes of an endowment „cu multe sate cu vecinii” “with many villages and their serfs”, and a chronicle states that whoever had lived twelve years in a boyar's village was to remain a vecin.^[12][10] Cihac explains the sense as a native peasant settled on an estate and owing labour; Șăineanu traces it to “(peasant) neighbour, local inhabitant”, a sense already known in medieval Latin.^[13][14] The same condition was called rumân in Wallachia and iobag in Transylvania.^[15][7] As an adjective, of lands and countries, it appears in Cantemir and in Budai-Deleanu's „țările vecine” “the neighbouring countries”.^[3]

Romanian derived vecini “to be a neighbour”, vecinie “serfdom”, învecina “to border on” and vecinesc “of a serf”.^[4]

Timeline

• 1482 – a document cited by Tiktin, the first record.^[10]
• 1570 – vecinii “the neighbours” in Coresi's Psalter.^[11]
• c. 1573–1578 – vecin in the Psaltirea Scheiană.^[2]
• 1607 – vecin “fellow man” in a manuscript.^[10]
• 17th century – vecin “serf” in the Moldavian chronicles.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. neighbouring, nearby; sharing a border.^[16][2]

Noun

1. A neighbour: a person who lives or stands near someone; also a neighbouring people or state.^[16]
2. (historical) In medieval Moldavia, a peasant bound to a feudal lord; a serf.^[16][12]

Word family

• vecinătate
• vecini
• vecinie
• învecina
• vecinaș
• vecinesc

Related words

• Aromanian vitsin
• Latin vīcīnus

Usage notes

Prin vecini or în vecini means “somewhere nearby, round the neighbours”.^[16] Ciorănescu has a separate, rare adjective vecin “bovine”, from Latin vaccinus according to Candrea, used only in the plant name limbă vecină, the hart's-tongue fern (Scolopendrium vulgare).^[4][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 1445
3. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vecin
4. ^ a b c d e f 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. vecin
5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9321
6. ^ Graur, Alexandru (1980), Cuvinte înrudite, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 110
7. ^ a b Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1397
8. ^ a b Papahagi, Tache (1963), Dicționarul dialectului aromân, general și etimologic, București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 1115
9. ^ Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 175
10. ^ 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. vecin
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 14:4
12. ^ a b c Costinescu, Mariana; Georgescu, Magdalena; Zgraon, Florentina (1987), Dicționarul limbii române literare vechi (1640–1780): termeni regionali, București: Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, p. 1, 312
13. ^ Cihac, A. de (1870), Dictionnaire d'étymologie daco-romane I: Éléments latins comparés avec les autres langues romanes, Frankfurt am Main, p. 308
14. ^ Șăineanu, Lazăr (1929), Dicționar universal al limbei române, 6th ed., Craiova: Scrisul Românesc, p. 1, 691
15. ^ Stati, Vasile (2003), Dicționar moldovenesc-românesc, Chișinău, p. 334
16. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1190