Una breve storia del ‘cadavere’: caduti latini, corpi morti romanzi e una postilla dantesca

Abstract

The designations of death, dying, and the dead have been extensively studied, especially since they are often subject to linguistic taboo and are therefore named through euphemisms and dysphemisms. This contribution will reconstruct the history of the lexical type cadaver, in parallel with corpus (mortuum), from ancient Latin to modern Romance languages: the ‘X-phemic’ model will be discussed, but the study will adopt a semasiological perspective.