Newralgiczny: leksykologiczne studium przypadku

The aim of the article is to present a comprehensive lexicological description of the adjective newralgiczny with special reference to the semantic and pragmatic problems which are associated with it. During the course of the discussion the author inter alia shed light on the question of the most likely etymology of this word (from the Fr. nevralgique, an artificial word-building compound consisting of assimilated Greek formants), determined the presumable period when the word was borrowed by the Polish language and put forward a suggestion to account for the disruption of the analogous change of the affixoid newr‑ (*neur‑) which is a part of this word. Moreover, on the basis of the lexicographical and corpus material the author analysed the catalogue of meanings which the word currently has, suggested a reconstruction of the path of derivation which is responsible for these meanings and presented the relations of the aforementioned word with the analogous lexemes in other European languages.