vizita

Forms

vizita (third-person singular present vizitează, past participle vizitat), first conjugation^[1] MDA2 records a rare present vizit beside vizitez, and a rare subjunctive să vizite.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin vīsitō (“to see often, visit”), with French visiter as a second model.^[3][2][4][5] The DLR compares German visitieren, and the neologism dictionaries add Italian visitare.^[3][6] Wiktionary gives French first, from the Latin.^[1] The Latin verb is the frequentative of vīsō (“to go and see”), itself from videō (“to see”).^[7][1]

An older variant, vizitarisi, had the same senses.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Tiktin's first record is of 1755, in a protocol.^[5] MDA2 and the DLR start with Iorgovici's Observații de limba rumânească of 1799, in the sense “to call on someone”.^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

The first sense is social: to call on someone out of friendship, courtesy or duty; a doctor visits patients at home or on the ward.^[2][3] It then came to mean going to see a place, a town or a museum, and inspecting a building or institution on the spot;^[2][4] MDA2 also has the obsolete sense “to attend (school)”.^[2][4]

Recent uses are “to visit a web page”, recorded from 2006 after English to visit, and in criminal slang “to burgle a home while the owners are out”.^[8][9]

Timeline

• 1755 – Tiktin's first record, in a protocol.^[5]
• 1799 – in Iorgovici's Observații.^[2][3]
• 1893 – Damé marks it as a neologism.^[10]
• 2006 – “to visit a web page”.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To visit someone, to go and see them from friendship or duty; of a doctor, to see and examine a patient.^[4][2]
2. To go and see a place, a town, a museum or a sight: Am vizitat castelul vara trecută. “We visited the castle last summer.”^[4]
3. To inspect, to check on the spot.^[4][2]
4. (computing) To go to a web page.^[8]
5. (slang) To burgle a home.^[9]

Related words

• vizită
• vedea

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 1500
3. ^ a b c d e Academia Română (1965–2010), Dicționarul limbii române (DLR), serie nouă, tom I–XIX, București: Editura Academiei Române, p. s.v. vizita
4. ^ a b c d e f DEX (2009), Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române [Explanatory dictionary of the Romanian language], Bucharest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, p. 1203
5. ^ 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. vizita
6. ^ Marcu, Florin; Maneca, Constant (1986), Dicționar de neologisme, 3rd ed., București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, p. s.v. vizita
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. vīsitō
8. ^ a b c Dimitrescu, Florica (1997), Dicționar de cuvinte recente, 2nd ed., București: Logos (with the 3rd ed., 2013, in CLRE), p. s.v. vizita
9. ^ a b Volceanov, George (2007), Dicționar de argou al limbii române, București: Niculescu, p. s.v. vizita
10. ^ Damé, Frédéric (1893–1895), Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français, 4 vols., Bucarest: Imprimerie de l'État, p. s.v. vizita