THE CONCEPT OF A HAIR' IN LATIN: SYNONYMY AND SEMANTICS

The article considers a complex of Latin lexemes with the meaning ‘a hair on the human body’ within the science of Human Anatomy. Latin-Russian and Russian-Latin dictionaries served as the source of the material. The method of systemic sampling helped to select the names of hair of different locations recorded in the dictionaries. All the obtained terminological units were classified due to the type of hair: lanugo hairs, long (terminal) hair and bristly hair. A dominant lexeme that forms the basis of designing word combinations with it was determined in every group of terms. Thus, in the smallest set of terms describing lanugo hairs, the lexeme ‘lanugo’ prevailed, no dominant lexeme being found in bristly hair descriptions. The richest arsenal of vocabulary was observed in naming long or terminal hair, where, apart from the dominant ‘pilus’, the synonyms ‘capillus’, ‘crinis’ and ‘coma’ were revealed. All identified terminological groups were examined in terms of synonymous constructions and lexical combinability. Moreover, the list of clinical terms constructed with the considered dominant lexemes and their Greek doublets was given concerning several pathological conditions of the human body hair.