Abstract: The article is focused, firstly, on a substantive that has remained outside the scope of study on the 9th-century Uchitel’noe evangelie – ал(ъ)кота. Its 6 appearances in this collection are observed together with their Greek corresponding words and direct respective contexts in the source and target texts. The derivatives of the same root are also traced in the monument together with their Greek counterparts. Then, a visual thesaurus is presented of the concurrent nouns with the root *alk- according to the main diachronic dictionaries. Finally, two synonymic roots – пост- and глад- are presented in terms of their distribution in the monument and their semantic peculiarities. The conclusions are that the words for hunger in Uchitel’noe evangelie are of three roots and that each of these roots has its exact Greek counterpart: глад- translates λιμ- and signifies ‘acute need for food’; пост- corresponds to νηστ- and is related to ‘voluntary deprivation of food’, and ал(ъ)к- is related to πεῖν- only in its more general meaning of ‘need for food’ (but not in its meaning related to ‘gluttony’). The word ал(ъ)кота is relatively rare in the older written monuments. Nevertheless, it completes the thesaurus of nouns with ал(ъ)к-/лак-, it is inherent in the Old Bulgarian literary language, and, in particular, in Constantine of Preslav’s language.

Authors: Dikova, Ekaterina

DOI: 10.17846/CL.2023.16.1.22-33

Publication order reference: Assistant Professor Ekaterina Dikova, PhD.; Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology, 45 Moskovska Street, Sofia 1000, Bulgaria; email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7751-0098

Source: Konštatínove listy, 2023, vol.: 16, issue: 1, pages: 22-33 (PDF file)

Keywords: OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC, DIACHRONIC LEXICOLOGY, NINTH CENTURY, DIDACTIC GOSPEL

Language: ENGLISH

Recommended Citation:
Dikova, Ekaterina. 2023. Towards the History of Words for Hunger in the Old Bulgarian Corpus: On Material from the So-Called Uchitel’noe evangelie by Constantine of Preslav. In Konštantínove listy [Constantine’s Letters] 16/1, 22-33.