Taboo zoonyms: What do 'bear', 'lynx' and 'wolf' have in common?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to trace the etymologies of the English words bear, lynx and wolf and their Polish equivalents niedźwiedź, ryś and wilk within the context of Indo-European languages in terms of the mechanisms for creating euphemisms to denote animals subject to the phenomenon of linguistic tabooization. The methodology comprises the following stages: selection of cognates (to determine the scope of attestation); examination of the semantic features of the selected vocabulary; and an attempt to outline the problem of the functional features of euphemisms to denote tabooed vocabulary. The results of these considerations can contribute to concretising our ideas about the linguistic constitution of the surrounding world by past language users and linguistic interrelationships, as well as help reveal the peculiarities of euphemistic vocabulary conditioned by the functioning of linguistic taboos.