Despre etimologia frazeologică multipă. Câteva distincții suplimentare
Problems of Grammatical Homonymy: The Verb

Summary/Abstract: More than half a century ago, Al. Graur launched the concept (as well as the term) of multiple etymology. Th. Hristea, developing one of B.P. Hasdeu’s ideas, proved the fact that the research of the origin of a phraseological unit is also linked to the science of etymology. What is more, the same linguist demonstrated the fact that also in the case of phrases, not only in that of words, one can talk about multiple etymology, namely multiple phraseological etymology. The examples given by Th. Hristea are convincing enough and the concept is worth being taken into consideration in such research. A further proof – also starting from Hasdeu – is given by the etymological research done by Stelian Dumistrăcel, who was interested in retracing the way to image of many Romanian idioms. Yet, unlike Th. Hristea – who showed interest mainly in the multiple origins of a phraseologism borrowed in the Romanian language – , St. Dumistrăcel gave priority to the phenomenon of polygenesis, often favouring internal phraseological etymology over some suggested foreign etymologies. My paper aims at proving – starting from an idea I put forward in 2009 – that one can champion the idea of internal multiple phraseological etymologies: in some cases, there are many different explanations concerning the birth of some idioms in Romanian, which are equally convincing and have to be mentioned in etymological research of this type.

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