From leech to doctor: The Lexical and Semantic Evolution of Terms for ‘physician’ in Non-Medical Prose Texts

• Authors: Gajek, Maja

Abstracts

EN

The study examines five names of medieval medical practitioners: barber, doctor, leech, physician, and surgeon. The aim is to view the semantic change of those names in non-medical prose texts from the Middle English period. The analysis also considers their origin, frequency, semantic fields, function and both metaphorical and non-metaphorical meanings in Middle English and later. Furthermore, the research verifies to what extent the findings of Sylwanowicz (2003) are confirmed by the results of a similar examination of a non-medical corpus. The data for the study come from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose, with the support of historical dictionaries.

Keywords

EN

medical terminology; medieval medicine; professions; semantic change; physician

• Publisher: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw
• Journal: Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2020
• Issue: 29/2
• Pages: 73-90

Dates

published

2020

Contributors

author

Gajek, Maja

Identifiers

DOI

10.7311/0860-5734.29.2.04

Biblioteka Nauki

888962