ANALYSIS OF THE CONNOTATIVE AND DENOTATIVE MEANINGS OF THE TERM ”DRAGON” (BALAUR) AS IT APPEARS IN THE ROMANIAN PHYTONYMY
ANALYSIS OF THE CONNOTATIVE AND DENOTATIVE MEANINGS OF THE TERM ”DRAGON” (BALAUR) AS IT APPEARS IN THE ROMANIAN PHYTONYMY

Summary/Abstract: Many of the Romanian phytonyms are directly related to the dragon („balaur”). Like in other folkloric creations, in our ethnobotany this being has a majority of evil representations, portraited as a ferocious living form. Our paper aims to reveal an inventory, an interpretation and a statistic of Romanian names of plants which implicates the word „balaur”, spread through the botanical terminology, a phenomenon which, as considered by E. Coşeriu is not enough highlighted (given that the individual speaker became creator of language / poetry whenever he named a flower. Botanical popular terminology has primarily a practical value, designating, distinguishing and categorizing elements of the plant kingdom within the given natural reign, but also has a high theoretical significance, especially for linguists, both by the ethimons to which they send back and by the metaphorical meanings the phytonims mostly have.

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