Old Belarusian Concept CNOTA on the Background of Polish Language of the 16th- 17th Centuries

Abstract

The article analyses the Old Belarusian concept цнота (‘virtue’) in comparison with the Polish cnota of the  16^th century. The aim of the study is to identify the specific features of understanding this value in the Old Belarusian cultural tradition and to determine to what extent it corresponds to the characteristics of the Polish concept. The research is based on the theoretical principles of the Lublin School of Cognitive Ethnolinguistics, particularly the method of cognitive definition. The material includes 147 contexts of the lexeme цнота found in Old Belarusian texts from the 16^th – 17^th centuries, as well as data from historical dictionaries of the Belarusian language. The results show that цнота was perceived in the Old Belarusian as a divinely inspired moral quality associated with faith, wisdom, humility, and good deeds — an ideal requiring effort and serving as an example to others. The reconstructed value profile is largely typical of medieval Europe and closely resembles the representation of the Polish lexeme cnota in the  texts of the same period. However, the Polish term is characterised by much higher frequency, a greater degree of conceptualisation, and semantic differentiation. Unlike its Polish counterpart, the Old Belarusian цнота almost never expresses the meaning of ‘female sexual purity’, which probably became established later.