viers

Forms

viers n (plural viersuri)^[1] The Moldavian lexicon of Mardarie (1649) has the form vierș.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin versus (“line, row, verse”).^{[4][5][6][7][8][1]} The Latin noun comes from vertō (“to turn”).^[9] Pușcariu lists Italian verso, French vers, Spanish vierso and Portuguese verso as cognates, and Ciorănescu compares an Albanian word.^[7][4] Bogrea discussed how the sense “melody” arose.^[4]

It is a doublet of vers, the 19th-century learned borrowing of the same Latin word, and of the Transylvanian verș, which follows the pronunciation of Hungarian vers.^[4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is the form vierș in Mardarie's lexicon of 1649.^[2] The lexicons of 1649 and the 1660s use it for Slavonic words for chant and church hymn.^[3] MDA2 and the DLR cite Dosoftei, where the psaltery makes its song resound.^[5][10]

Semantic evolution

The early records all have the musical sense: a melody or church chant.^[3][10] Dosoftei's lives of the saints speak of a wolf howling “with a thin tune”: „cu viers supțire”.^[2] The sense widened to the sound of the voice and its timbre, the song of birds, the cries of some animals, the sound of instruments and, in Transylvania and Maramureș, the sound of bells.^[5][10] In Moldova it can mean a way of speaking: Sadoveanu's innkeeper hears from a stranger's viersul vorbirii that he is from Muntenia.^[11]

Ciorănescu names versui “to versify” and viersar “cantor, singer” among its derivatives.^[4]

Timeline

• 1649 – vierș in Mardarie's lexicon, the first record.^[2][3]
• 1688 – viers in the Bucharest Bible.^[12]
• 1692 – viersul raiului “the melody of paradise” in a text in Gaster's chrestomathy.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. (popular) A melody, tune or song.^[6][1]
2. (popular) The voice and its timbre.^[6][1]
3. The song of a bird, the sound of an instrument.^[13][5]

Word family

• versui
• viersar
• viersuitor

Related words

• vers
• verș

Usage notes

The plural is viersuri; a popular variant is ghiers.^[6] The learned vers “line of verse” is a separate borrowing of the same Latin word.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Tiktin, Hariton (2000–2005), Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., revised by Paul Miron and Elsa Lüder, 3 vols., Cluj-Napoca: Clusium, p. s.v. viers
3. ^ a b c d 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. vierș
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. viers
5. ^ 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, 1476
6. ^ a b c d DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1197
7. ^ a b Pușcariu, Sextil (1905), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache I: Lateinisches Element, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 176
8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 9248
9. ^ Scriban, August (1939), Dicționaru limbii românești (etimologii, înțelesuri, exemple, citațiuni, arhaizme, neologizme, provincializme), Iași: Presa Bună, p. 1405
10. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. viers
11. ^ Stati, Vasile (2003), Dicționar moldovenesc-românesc, Chișinău, p. 335
12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Ezekiel 2:10
13. ^ Dima, Eugenia (coord.) (2007), Dicționar explicativ ilustrat al limbii române, Chișinău: Arc / Gunivas, p. s.v. viers