Withdrawal of synonymy from terminology as exemplified by the Polish medical terminology at the turn of the 19th and 20th century

Abstract

An examination of the lexical material contained in Słownik terminologii lekarskiej polskiej [Polish Medical Terminology Dictionary] of 1881 and Słownik lekarski polski [Polish Medical Dictionary] of 1905 shows that the synonymy withdrawal rate in this period was only 20%. The purpose of the article is to provide a detailed description of this process, including the process of an apparent withdrawal of synonymy in the lexicon of 1905 (e.g. some foreign language entries have not been recorded there at all; sometimes a synonymic string was removed while leaving a new term next to the foreign language entry, "new" meaning absent in the dictionary of 1881).