FEATURES OF METAPHORICAL TRANSFER IN UKRAINIAN MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

Abstract

Ukrainian medical terminology is one of the largest and most complex Ukrainian terminological systems, reflecting the stages of the formation of medicine as a science in general. One of the methods of creating medical terminological units is metaphorical nomination. Metaphor-terms introduced into medical terminology fully adapt to it and acquire an independent connotation. They facilitate the understanding of a term and allow for avoiding long nominations in a doctor's speech. The study of the process of metaphorization of medical terms has not bypassed linguistic research. Linguists have paid attention to the translation of anatomical metaphor-terms based on the material of English and Ukrainian, the analysis of the metaphorical component in medical terminology, the sources of metaphorization in medical terminology, etc. However, to this day, there is no special comprehensive study of metaphorical processes in medical terminology in Ukrainian linguistics.
In our research, we analyzed terminological units formed through metaphorization in the field of medicine (based on the lexico-semantic principle); traced the semantic transformations of common lexical units into terms, and clarified the role of metaphor in such processes. Most of the analyzed terms were recorded in the publication International Anatomical Terminology (Vinnytsia, 2010).
The change in the status of a name (terminologization) within metaphorization most often occurs as a result of transferring a name based on similarity of form, process, function, etc. The role of building material in such processes can be played by household objects (renal calyx, pericardium, uterine tube), somatic terms (owl's eye, crus of diaphragm), plant names (eyeball, olfactory bulb, nerve branch), and animals (seahorse, lupus, angina pectoris), geographical names (circle of Willis, gastric pits, optic chiasm).
The article also draws attention to the structure of medical metaphor-terms (phrases). Metaphorization processes are powerful factors in the formation of medical terminology.