The World Seen Through the Vegetable Colours: A Comparative Study of English, French, and Polish

BarbarA Taraszka-Drożdż; Grzegorz Drożdż

doi:10.18290/rh257311.13s

Published : 2025-12-19

Vol. 73 No. 11 Zeszyt specjalny (2025)

The World Seen Through the Vegetable Colours: A Comparative Study of English, French, and Polish

BarbarA Taraszka-Drożdż

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4944-9813

Grzegorz Drożdż

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7327-5329

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh257311.13s

Abstract

This study constitutes a comparative investigation of figurative senses of vegetable names in three languages: English, French, and Polish. Drawing on lexicographic data, the goal of the analysis is to investigate those vegetable names whose figurative senses are motivated by these vegetables’ colour. Our analysis shows that, on the one hand, all three languages make use of this type of phytonyms as colour terms. At the same time, in all the languages the vegetable colour served as a basis for menonymic and metaphorical extension of vegetable names to different elements of the world that surrounds us—people, animals, and things. In both of these research areas, the languages reveal certain similarities as well as culture-specific elements that are unique for each of them.

Keywords:

colour terms, comparative analysis, English, French, metaphor, metonymy, semantic extension, Polish, vegetable names

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