On the history of the old food name bospor(os)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18349/MagyarNyelv.2023.2.195Keywords:
old food names, etymology, phonetic change, semantic changeAbstract
A sauce called bospor or bosporos was one of the favourite dishes of old Hungarian cuisine. The word, which is almost extinct today, has been attested in this language since the 16th century, and the study presents numerous sources in which it appears. In its first occurrences, it is mostly found as borspor or borsporos, so it is likely that it originated from this word combination (‘pepper’ + ‘powder(ed)’), and that the later forms bosporos, bocsporos and then, due to folk etymology, bocskoros ‘having sandals on’, came into existence as a result of phonetic changes. Although several authors doubt this etymology, their arguments are not convincing enough, therefore the paper argues that the current explanation of the origin of this food name should be accepted until more serious refutation is found. On the other hand, the author does not consider the solutions of contemporary Hungarian dictionaries regarding the lemmatization of these word forms to be very fortunate.
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Copyright (c) 2023 Tamás Forgács
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