anului

Anului is a Romanian grammatical form rather than a stand-alone noun. It is the genitive/dative singular form of the masculine noun an, meaning year, when used with the definite article suffix. The base word an becomes anul in its definite form (the year), and anului appears as the genitive/dative singular form used after prepositions or other words that require the genitive case.

In Romanian, many masculine nouns form the genitive/dative singular with the ending -ului, yielding anului after the definite article construction. This form is common in phrases that express possession, attribution, or relation to a year. For example, sfârșitul anului means “the end of the year,” and începutul anului means “the beginning of the year.” The phrase producția anului translates to “the year’s production” or “production of the year,” showing how anului marks a relationship to the year.

Anului also appears in time expressions where the genitive is used after a preposition, as in the possessive-like structure la începutul anului or în sfârșitul anului. Although in some fixed date expressions such as în anul 1990 the definite form anul is used, the genitive form anului is prevalent in constructions that explicitly link a word to the year.

Etymology traces anul back to Latin annus, with the Romanian genitive/dative ending evolving to anului in the definite sense. Anului thus serves a grammatical role in linking nouns to the year in a range of contexts, rather than functioning as a separate lexical entry.