Tendências neológicas no léxico do português brasileiro: o caso de "gourmet"

Abstract

Before the turn of the millennium, the lexical unit gourmet was used in Brazil in association with refined cuisine. Employed in reference to connoisseurs of exquisite dishes, this lexical unit, derived from French, began to take on new meanings starting in the 2000s, with the growth of the real estate market for so-called “gourmet balconies" and, later, with the increasing interest in gastronomic culture, as seen in the proliferation of TV shows and internet pages dedicated to this universe. This made gourmet increasingly present in the lexicon of Brazilian Portuguese. Based on these considerations and drawing on the principles of lexical studies, the aim of this work is to discuss the use and derivations of the lexical unit gourmet in Brazilian Portuguese. We will also consider the possible determination of the neologicity of these lexical units, highlighting their relevance in contemporary society. For this purpose, we will use general language dictionaries, both printed (Aulete, 2011; Bechara, 2011; Borba, 2011) and electronic (Aulete Digital, Michaelis Online, and Houaiss Online) as an exclusion corpus. The results indicate that the use of these lexical units reflects, in Chomskyan terms, the intrinsic capacity of languages to generate new forms from preexisting elements.