Loanwords and Expressions Denoting Hues in Old Hungarian

Abstract

The study presents loanwords and expressions referring to hues in the old Hungarian language. It relays mostly on data collected from the Historical Dictionary of Hungarian Language from Transylvania (SzT.), and it also uses data from the Hungarian Etymological Dictionary (TESz.). A number of studies have been written about the Hungarian colour terms presenting usage and distribution, yet only few of them dealt with their etymology and their historical usage. The present paper focuses on the etymology of terms denoting hues, and aims to present reasons for naming and using these loan colour terms. The study investigates whether these terms appearing in old Transylvanian texts were loanwords, loan expressions or they were simply used as a result of linguistic interference.

Keywords

• historical linguistics
• the old hungarian language
• colour names
• hues
• conceptual basis of naming something
• loanwords
• linguistic interference