Les mots exprimant la notion de chagrin en bulgare, en français et en roumain
Words expressing the notion of grief in Bulgarian, French and Romanian

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses words with the shared meaning „sorrow, grief“ in Bulgarian, French and Romanian. Etymological analysis reveals that in French and Bulgarian the initial etymons from which such lexis developed have as a semantic component the idea of physical pain or violence. In French and Romanian, however, there are lexemes whose initial semantics can only be traced to the social sphere. It is not possible to establish shared etymons between French and Bulgarian, but common semantic models are frequent – in both languages there are words for „sorrow, grief“ which developed from earlier meanings of „torture“, „tear, cut“ and „press, squeeze“. Unlike in Bulgarian and French where the words for „sorrow, grief“ have been inherited from Proto-Slavonic and Latin, in Romanian the majority of the words with such meanings are borrowings, mainly form Old Bulgarian and Bulgarian. All such words, to the exception of jale have undergone significant specific semantic transformations. Special attention is devoted to forms such as Fr. ennui and chagrin, Rom. dor, which are of notable interest both from a semantic and from an etymological point of view.

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