[Conceptualization of the disease and some of its designations: The contribution of a comparative etymological study]

Every cognitive process, including the conceptualization of some perceived facts, such as human disease states, entails both an emotional as an evaluative aspect. Regarding this, cross-cultural research has shown that there are common human value contents. Therefore, in a human phylogenetic context, it is plausible to argue that, along with the development of our language, both the hetero-perception and self-perception of some specific human states have been termed descriptively to communicate their adaptive significance. This is the case of those human states whose properties have been conceptualized, with the corresponding evaluative emotional component, as "disease". Since names are the symbols of a language that designate any type of object, either perceptual or conceptual, reviewing the etymology of terms related to "disease" could be a contribution to its elucidation. In consequence, some equivalent terms to the Spanish word enfermedad were reviewed in various Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. From the analyzed denominations we can conclude that the different words have described the perception of human conditions as weak, evil, suffering states, etc. Therefore, there is a denotative concordance with the diseased human states in the revised cultures.