Vocabulari anatòmic de la tonyina: una proposta valenciana

Abstract

The tunny fish, Thunnus thynnus, is one of the most important sea species in Catalan culture and the Catalan food industry. However, despite its vital, commercial and gastronomic importance in the future of the Mediterranean, the lexis relating to it has been studied in an imprecise, piecemeal, sporadic fashion both in Catalan and other languages. Therefore, the principal aim of this article is to propose terminology to fill this gap with maximally accurate anatomical and gastronomic definitions. In this vocabulary, we present fifty-three terms that describe the morphology of the species, fifteen of which are already defined in our dictionaries, twenty-seven indirectly, and finally there are eleven basic vocabulary items referring to the anatomy of the fish and its gastronomic use that are absent from these reference works.