Rasprave Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje (Jan 2014)
Common European Phrasemes in Croatian Found in B. Klaić’s Dictionary of Foreign Words
Abstract
The paper discusses the status of common European phrasemes in Croatian found in various editions of B. Klaić’s Dictionary of Foreign Words. Common European phrasemes are defined as international phrasemes appearing in different European languages, with an identical meaning and a high degree of structural correspondence. These phrasemes tend to have a known common origin; however, there are also common European phrasemes with no confirmed source, i.e. it is not known from which language and text they originated and spread. This paper therefore aims to describe the status of common European phrasemes in B. Klaić’s Dictionary of Foreign Words, which contains valuable data on the origin of individual phrasemes, sayings, and proverbs. The Dictionary includes common European phrasemes that contain foreign proper names, foreign common nouns or foreign terms, or are translations from Latin and other languages. The Klaić’s Dictionary can serve as an important source for the study of phraseme origins, as a required starting point for a future etymological dictionary of Croatian phrasemes.
