出版社：Eduem - Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá
摘要：Linking semantics to ethnobiological research, this article
undertook an etymological and semasiological descriptive analysis of the term parasite and its
derivatives, describing their meaning in dictionary of six languages.Thirty-eight dictionaries were
surveyed, from the collection of the Central Library at the Universidade de Brasｨｪlia and Goethe-
Zentrum Brasｨｪlia. Etymologically, parasite comes from the Greek ｦﾐ¦Α¦Ρ.¦¦Ι¦Σ¦Ο., par¨¢s.tos (from par¨¢,
beside, next to + s.tos, food), and can mean ｡ｰthat which eats beside another｡ｱ. The analysis of the
lexeme parasite in the surveyed dictionaries reveals a great variety of meanings, including the
biological and connotative (social, religious, and physical), some of which are unique to each
language. Thirty-five synonyms were recorded. Most of them are in Portuguese. The biological
definition of the lexeme parasite was the most predominant meaning in the analyzed dictionaries
in all languages, but the most complete definition comes from French and English. Amongst the
connotative meanings, the social one was the most frequent. It refers both to the human behavior
of eating at someone｡ｯs house, as well as financial dependency. It was also noted that the French,
German, Italian and English dictionaries present more variety of meanings than the Portuguese
and Spanish ones, which must reflect cultural differences related to the perception of parasites.
This study indicates that the biological definitions of the lexeme parasite should be reviewed in
future editions of most of the surveyed dictionaries.
