THE SEMANTIC WEALTH OF THE LEMMA “LUME”. MEANINGS BORROWED INTO ROMANIAN FROM CHURCH SLAVONIC AND RENDERED THROUGH ROMANIAN WORDS OF LATIN ORIGIN
THE SEMANTIC WEALTH OF THE LEMMA “LUME”. MEANINGS BORROWED INTO ROMANIAN FROM CHURCH SLAVONIC AND RENDERED THROUGH ROMANIAN WORDS OF LATIN ORIGIN

Summary/Abstract: The Semantic Wealth of the Lemma “Lume”. Meanings Borrowed into Romanian from Church Slavonic and Rendered Through Romanian Words of Latin Origin. The present article investigates the special semantic situation of some Romanian words: lume [usu. „world”], with the meaning “light”, lege [usu. “law”] with the meaning “religion”, a ține [usu. “to hold”, “to keep”] with the meaning “to rule over”, a situation also described by Lazăr Șăineanu (1887/1999). Unlike the other words mentioned above, whose filiation of the senses is only partially influenced by meanings from another language than the one they etymologically derive from, the lemma lume has developed an exceptionally rich range of senses which cannot be traced back to its Latin etymon. While the Romanian word lume is derived from the Latin lumen, meaning “light”, its etymological sense was mainly preserved in old religious writings and only rarely in dialects or the general language. Instead, the word has come to incorporate all the meanings of the Latin mundus (the senses one finds, for instance, in the French word monde). This surprising development is described by Șăineanu as an addition of Church Slavonic nuances. Slavonic nuances are originally individual innovations, which nevertheless illustrate the mentality of the Romanian people. The examples are telling. In Romanian one can identify a specific meaning deriving from the opposition this world/the other world. As compared to the French, ce bas monde, in Romanian the certainty of the continuity of life beyond the threshold of this world generates a host of highly creative phrases and idioms that describe life after death: lumea drepților [the world of the just], lumea spiritelor [the world of the spirits], lumea (cea) luminată [the lighted world], alt rând de lume [another kind of world], lumea de apoi [the world to come], lumea (cea) de sus [the world from above]. In the case of the verb a ține [usu. “to hold”, “to keep”], the borrowed meaning “to rule over” – frequent in the old Romanian writings due to the influence of Church Slavonic – is equally relevant for the mentality of that age.

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