Traditional folk culture has developed over the centuries a system of healing practices and magical rituals to cure and prevent various diseases. Elements of empirical rationalism and magical notions are often intertwined in the remedies used. The lexemes from the thematic groups “health” and “disease” reveal the knowledge and experience of the Bulgarian in the treatment and prevention of diseases, the place of physical and mental health in their value system. The aim of the “Ethnolinguistic Dictionary of Bulgarian Folk Medicine” is to present the concepts of “health” and “disease” in the Bulgarian linguistic picture of the world in diachronic and synchronic aspects, revealing their linguistic representations in medieval manuscripts and in dialects from the entire Bulgarian linguistic area.
The authorship team of the “Ethnolinguistic Dictionary of Bulgarian Folk Medicine” includes collaborators from the Section for Ethnolinguistics and the Section for the History of the Bulgarian Language at the Institute for Bulgarian Language “Prof. L. Andreychin”: Prof. Dr. Mariyana Vitanova (editor), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vanya Micheva (editor), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yoanna Kirilova, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kalina Micheva-Peycheva, Assist. Prof. Dr. Nadezhda Nikolova.
The dictionary adds another fragment of folk culture in a lexicographically systematized form and would be of interest both to specialists from the scientific community and to a wider readership. It continues and enriches the ethno-linguistic lexicography in Bulgaria, for the development of which the Institute for Bulgarian Language “Prof. L. Andreychin has a leading role.
