Romanian lexis

The lexis of the Romanian language (or Daco-Romanian), a Romance language, has changed over the centuries as the language evolved from Vulgar Latin, to Proto-Romanian, to medieval, modern and contemporary Romanian.

Romanian has inherited a number of about 2000 lexical items from its ancestral language, Latin. These comprise most basic concepts of society, for example:

Many words have not only changed their shape, but also their meaning during their evolution from Latin to Romanian. Such are:

By the later Middle Ages, a great number of Slavic loanwords had already entered Romanian.

Among the basic Slavic loanwords are:

(see also Slavic influence on Romanian)

In the 19th century, as the Romanian society transitioned from rural and agricultural towards urban and industrial, the lexis underwent a vigorous enrichment with loanwords from its Romance relatives, French and Italian. Many scholarly and technical terms were also imported from Neo-Latin. Some words, especially of Greek (arvună, ipochimen, simandicos) and Turkish (acadea, beizadea, hatâr) origin, fell into relative disuse or acquired an ironic connotation. The Slavic part of the lexis, of earlier entry and more deeply anchored into the language, survived relatively unscathed.

Among the words which entered the language:

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