Share of Borrowed Medical Terms in the 19th Century Main Synonyms (on the baseof the names of diseases from the Dictionary of Polish Medical Terminology)

Abstract

The ordering of the Polish medical terminology in the 19^th century resulted in the release of the Dictionary of Polish Medical Terminology (Polish: Słownik terminologii lekarskiej polskiej) in 1881. The publication collected, among other things, synonymic series of Polish medical terms following the rule that the best term was listed as the first one, which in this paper, is referred to as the main synonym. The aim of the article is to present the frequency of instances when the main synonym is a borrowing. The analysis of 940 synonymic series concerning the names of diseases reveals that borrowings are rare in the analysed material (only 57 out of the 2,469 terms in the synonymic series). A borrowing (mainly from Greek and Latin)  constitutes the main synonym only 15 times. The authors of the Dictionary preferred native terms despite the fact that foreign ones are usually more “economical” (e.g. with regard to their structure).