Incompletely understood medical texts, like other kinds of technical writing,
pose problems that require a multi-disciplinary approach. In addition, the
etymological writings of ancient commentators hint at their own cultures
priorities and limitations. Progress today, therefore, also depends partly upon
how well we can harmonize our own thinking with the beliefs and practices of an
alien culture, whose medicine may overlap with culinary and other social uses. A
puzzling word may have been reshaped to reflect the supposed properties of the
entity denoted or the use made of it. Plant names, which figure strongly in such
texts, are particularly liable to be passed from language to language as
‘culture borrowings’ and are thus especially vulnerable to this false
rationalization process, commonly known as ‘folk etymology’. In a personal
exploration I analyse some modern vocabulary and identify several varieties of
the process and then illustrate its effects by means of toponyms and medicinal
plant names from mediaeval Italy and ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Greece and
Italy. Since no known language seems immune from etymologizing, the generic
points that emerge are offered as a contribution to the decipherers craft.
Лексико-семантический анализ лексемы балтырған (с использованием материалов корпуса башкирского языка)