---
title: "Sextil Pușcariu"
chunk: 5/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextil_Pușcariu"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:14.223615+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Between 1922 and 1926, Pușcariu served as part of Romania's delegation to the League of Nations. This allowed him to leave the country regularly, and also cemented his friendship with diplomat Nicolae Titulescu, whom Pușcariu called "charming". Together, they defended the Romanian cause against property claims made in Transylvania by Hungarian citizens. In 1923, Pușcariu also helped art historian George Oprescu take office art the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, of which he himself was a member. The following year, Pușcariu put out Cultura magazine from Cluj. It enshrined his affiliation to Europeanism and support for the League of Nations.
From around 1922, Pușcariu approached various intellectuals and politicians with the goal of creating new institutions for the preservation of cultural identity. With Vintilă Brătianu and Nistor, he set up the Brătianu Foundation, which financed a network of summer schools for adult education. With Iorga's assistance, Pușcariu established the Museum of the Romanian Language, a research institute he had conceived in early 1917, while on the front. The large group of collaborators and students who advanced the language as an academic discipline came to be known as the Cluj School of linguistics. Rather than confine himself to a narrow field, Pușcariu incorporated linguistics, history, sociology and even literature into his studies, constantly referring to research in other disciplines. For instance, in 1927 he penned articles recording how the Romanian War of Independence impacted Transylvanian society, as well as an overview of Hungarian borrowings in Romanian, which saw print in Pásztortűz.
Pușcariu introduced Romanian linguistics to the theories of Meyer-Lübke, particularly as they related to the form of Latin that underpins the language; to Matteo Bartoli's ideas about the isolated and peripheral position of the language; and to Jules Gilliéron's dialectological notions. In terms of Romanian scholars, he incorporated the archaeological findings of Vasile Pârvan, as well as the sociological and folkloric studies of Simion Mehedinți and Romulus Vuia. His respect for their opinions led him to draw upon the work of Densusianu, Candrea, Constantin C. Giurescu, Iorgu Iordan, Alexandru Rosetti, Alexandru Graur, and others. He had over eight hundred articles and numerous books to his name. In 1930, he helped organize a Folklore Archive within the museum building; led by Ion Mușlea, this was the country's first institution dedicated exclusively to the study of its folklore tradition.
The museum, associated with the University of Cluj (soon renamed after King Ferdinand I), had as its goals the spread of popular interest in studying and cultivating the Romanian language, the training of Romanian philologists and the publication of monographs, special dictionaries, glossaries and bibliographies. The museum ended up being the nerve center of the great dictionary project, resumed from the 1906 attempts; this project was headed by Constantin Lacea and Theodor Capidan, who in turn were assisted by numerous other linguists in different stages. Lexical and etymological notes were presented in weekly meetings and later published in the museum's Dacoromania magazine, and in this way, practically all active members of the museum contributed to the Dictionary. Pușcariu and his team worked for 43 years, until 1948, completing some 60,000 definitions across over 3,000 pages covering up to the letter "L".

The museum's second great project was a Romanian Linguistic Atlas, conceived and led by Pușcariu but principally executed by two of his associates, Sever Pop and Emil Petrovici. The pair prepared fieldwork in 398 localities, undertook the work between 1930 and 1938, thereafter drawing the maps. By 1943, there had appeared four volumes encompassing Pop's research and three from Petrovici, as well as a volume on dialect texts. Finally, Dacoromania appeared from 1921 to 1948, in eleven enormous volumes totaling some 9,000 pages. The magazine contained studies, articles, notes and reviews, mainly on linguistics (lexicology, dialectology, linguistic geography, language history, onomastics, general linguistics, grammar, phonetics and phonology) and philology, as well as research on history and literary criticism, cultural history and folklore. Each edition included a bibliography that systematically recorded writings on linguistics, philology, folklore, ethnography and literature, connected to Romanian language, culture and literature, both domestically and abroad.
Three generations of scholars worked on the magazine, with most articles presented at weekly meetings. Pușcariu, in an obituary for Nicolae Drăganu, commented on these sessions' usefulness, noting how the members would benefit from constructive criticism, "sometimes pointed, mainly intelligent, but never bitter, for the critical spirit never originated from a pleasure to destroy, but from a desire to complete, while the joy in another's discovery was always greater than the temptation to persist in a mistake". Despite remaining "enthralled by Latin elements" in onomastics, Pușcariu announced in Dacoromania his conclusion that no Romanian surname had been traced back to a Roman source, contradicting Philippide in this respect. More controversially, the journal segregated its contributors into income classes: while most received fees of 150 lei, Iorga's articles would fetch some 1,000 per page. The institution also provided stable employment to Pușcariu family members, including daughter Lia, daughter-in-law Maria, and nephew Vasile Bologa.