vest

Forms

vest n (uncountable)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from German West or Westen, as Ciorănescu, DEX 2009, MDA2 and the neologism dictionaries give it.^[2][3][4][5] The old variants had other sources: ovest comes from Italian ovest and uest from French ouest.^[6] Tiktin names all three languages for the word itself.^[7]

The German word continues Middle High German west and Old High German *west, from Proto-West Germanic *westr.^[8][1] The French and Italian words come in their turn from Old English west.^[9][10] They share a root with Latin vesper (“evening”).^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin dates the word to about 1790.^[7] MDA2 and the DLR cite first Amfilohie Hotiniul's geography of 1795, which explains the four points in the form ovest: „Răsăritul îl numesc est, apusul, ovest” “they call the east est, the west ovest”.^[4][6]

Semantic evolution

The word came with the geography books of the late 18th and early 19th century, which taught the foreign names of the cardinal points beside the native apus and răsărit: one of them explains that uest is the French word for apus.^[6] From the point of the compass it came to mean the western part of a country or region, and in politics the West, the states of western Europe and North America.^[3][11] It is also used as an invariable adjective.^[3][6]

Timeline

• c. 1790 – the first record.^[7]
• 1795 – ovest in Amfilohie Hotiniul's geography.^[4][6]
• 1893 – Damé glosses it with French ouest, couchant.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. west: the cardinal point opposite the east; the part of the horizon where the sun sets.^[3][4][1]
2. The western part of a region or country.^[11][13]
3. The West: the states of western Europe and North America; the Occident.^[3]

Related words

• est
• apus
• occident

Usage notes

Used as an adjective it means “western”, as in statele vest-europene “the western European states”.^[3][6]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. vest
3. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1194
4. ^ a b c d Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1464
5. ^ Marcu, Florin (2000), Marele dicționar de neologisme, București: Saeculum Vizual, p. s.v. vest
6. ^ a b c d e f Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vest
7. ^ a b c Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. vest
8. ^ Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
9. ^ a b Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
10. ^ a b Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier, p. s.v. ovest
11. ^ a b Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. vest
12. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. 2
13. ^ Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2002), Noul dicționar explicativ al limbii române, București: Litera Internațional, p. s.v. vest