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vindecare

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Etymology and origin of the Romanian word vindecare

Confidence
Established
Formation
Derivation
First attested
1570 Coresi's Psalter More words from the 16th century
Ultimate origin
Latin vindicō
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Latin vīs
Latin vindex
Latin vindicō
French venger
Italian vendicare
Romanian vindeca
Romanian vindecare
Spanish vengar
From the same root
Latin quamvīs ← vīs
Latin quīvīs ← vīs
Latin revindicō ← vindicō
Latin vindicātiō ← vindicō
Spanish venganza ← vengar

Forms

vindecare f (plural vindecări)[1] The old form vendecare is in the Psaltirea Scheiană: „Nu e vendecare pelițeei meale de multă mănie a ta” “there is no healing for my flesh because of your great anger”.[2][3]

Etymology

It is formed from Romanian vindeca + -re, the long infinitive of the verb.[4][3][1] The verb “to heal” is from Latin vindicō, which meant “to claim; to avenge”.[4][3][5] Ciorănescu explains the Romanian sense, unlike that of Italian vendicare, French venger or Spanish vengar, from the Latin sense “to set free”, citing Rohlfs.[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The noun appears in the 16th-century psalters: Coresi's Psalter of 1570 has vindecare in Psalm 37:2 and vendecare in Psalm 37:7, and the Psaltirea Scheiană has vendecare.[6][7][3] It means “healing” of the body there.[2]

Semantic evolution

The noun has always meant “healing, recovery” of a sick person or organ, and by extension the end of an illness, a remedy, and the closing of a wound.[3][2] Coresi's homilies already join bodily healing and the health of the soul, and the figurative sense “relief from grief or sorrow” occurs in the folk poems collected by Alecsandri: Inimioara rău mă doare / Și tu nu-mi dai vindecare “My heart aches badly and you give me no healing”.[2][8]

The 17th-century Slavonic–Romanian lexicons use it to render Slavonic words for healing, from Mardarie's lexicon of 1649 on.[9] The Bible of 1688 has it often.[10] Klein's dictionary of 1801 renders it with Latin sanatio, curatio.[11] The phrase fără vindecare means “incurable”.[4]

Timeline

  • 1570 – vindecare and vendecare in Coresi's Psalter.[6][7]
  • c. 1573-1578 – vendecare in the Psaltirea Scheiană.[6][3]
  • 1649 – in Mardarie's Slavonic–Romanian lexicon.[9]
  • 1688 – about twenty occurrences in the Bucharest Bible.[12]
  • 1801 – vindecáre “sanatio, curatio” in Klein's dictionary.[11]
  • 1825 – in the Lexicon de la Buda, glossed “sanatio, medela” and German Heilung.[13]

Meanings

Noun

  1. healing, recovery: the act of curing or being cured and its result; însănătoșire.[4][3] Fără vindecare: incurable.[4]
  2. The closing of a wound or cut.[3]
  3. (figurative) Relief from a moral suffering, a sorrow or grief.[3][8]
  4. (dated) A remedy.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vindecare
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” (2010), Micul dicționar academic, 2nd ed., 4 vols., București: Univers Enciclopedic Gold, p. 2, 1482
  4. ^ a b c d e DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1199
  5. ^ a b 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. vindeca
  6. ^ a b c 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 37:2
  7. ^ 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 37:7
  8. ^ a b Macrea, Dimitrie; Petrovici, Emil (coord.) (1955–1957), Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane, 4 vols., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, p. 4, 663
  9. ^ 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. vindecare
  10. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Proverbs 3:8
  11. ^ a b Gáldi, László (ed.) (1944), Samuel Klein: Dictionarium valachico-latinum. Primul dicționar al limbii române, Budapest: Királyi Magyar Pázmány Péter Tudományegyetemi Román Intézet (Klein's dictionary of 1801, with Gáldi's etymological study), p. 475
  12. ^ Biblia, adecă Dumnezeiasca Scriptură a ceii vechi și a ceii noao leage, București, 1688 (ed. 1988, tricentennial edition), p. Job 18:15
  13. ^ Lesicon românescu-latinescu-ungurescu-nemțescu quare de mai mulți autori, în cursul a trideci și mai multor ani s-au lucrat (1825), Buda: Typographia Universității (the Lexicon of Buda, ed. Petru Maior et al.), p. 755
Cite this entry

“Vindecare.” Etymologically, 12 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/ro/vindecare. Accessed 12 Nov. 2026.

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