Animal Names Used as Insults and Derogation in Polish and Spanish

This article deals with animal names which metaphorically signify various aspects of humans (physical and mental features, body parts, secretions, ill-states and actions), and can be used as derogation or insult. Generally animal names which are applied to a person are offensive. There are only few examples of animal names which do not have pejorative evaluation. In the article, lexical material from Polish and Spanish corpora is analyzed. Since the class of animal names is very extensive and diverse, it has been divided into several subclasses. The first one contains animals: 1) referring to physical features of a human being, 2) referring to the human pudenda and sexual activity, 3) naming feature of human character, 4) referring to a group of people, 5) signifying jobs and occupations, 6) naming human secretions, diseases, injuries, intoxications. Then names of animal body parts are described, secretions and animal states, behavior, sounds made by them and also names of actions performed on animals by a man. The last class analyzed in the present article, contains derivatives (nouns, adjectives and verbs) of animal names.