Study concerning the origins of some agricultural, horticultural and agro-food terms based on the latest Romanian etymological dictionaries

Abstract

Attributing the origin of the agricultural, horticultural and agro-food terms of the Romanian language is a controversial domain. The latest two etymological dictionaries analysing thousands of the Romanian words in terms of their origin include an approximately equal number of more than 300 terms from the above-mentioned domain. The etymological dictionary elaborated by Ciorănescu Al., 2002, gives these terms a Latin, Slavic origin or other European languages, which belong to some peoples with whom Romanians had historical relationships. This dictionary does not estimate the amount of words coming from substratum to more than 2%. The etymological dictionary elaborated by Vinereanu M., 2008, found that most of the mentioned words belonged to the pre-Latin, Thracian-Getic and Thracian-Illyrian substratum. The Latin or Slavic origin terms are found at a less proportion, as well as the mentioned terms from diverse European languages.