Borrowings in medical vocabulary in the 16th century and their presence in contemporary Polish (a case study of Stefan Falimirz’s herbarium)

Abstract

The paper presents similarities and differences in the behaviour of the borrowings in the 16^th century medical vocabulary, and their presence in contemporary Polish. The comparison concerns the status of the borrowings in the 16^th century (division into terminological borrowings and non-terminological ones) and in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, their numbers, origin, meanings, structure, chronology, frequency, possible synonyms, and the impact of the above mentioned factors on their survival until today. It results from the analysis that non-terminological borrowings survived in a higher number, however, their status in contemporary Polish is different, since most of them have become terms. On the other hand, terminological borrowings, despite the fact that just few of them have survived (7,1%), still constitute a part of the specialist vocabulary.