A atârna: încercare de micromonografie istoric-etimologică

The present contribution is a historical and typological illustration of the different hypotheses issued in relation to the etymology of the Romanian verb a atârna ‘to hang, to weigh’, as well as of some members of its lexical family, starting from the first attempts found in the Romanian lexicographic works of the 19th century, continuing with the great achievements of 20th century lexicography, until the most recent work in the field of etymology, elaborated by the Romanian Academy: The Etymological Dictionary of the Romanian language (DELR, 2011 1 ). Such an endeavour aims to reconstruct and clarify in a diachronic sense the attempts to etymologize r. a atârna and to evaluate their plausibility, especially from a phonetic and semantic point of view, in order to formulate a new etymological hypothesis and some general remarks on the chances of etymological reconstruction for Romanian language.