[The semiologic part of the qualifying adjective in psychopathology (author's transl)]

The study deals with the application of a hypothetical key of contemporary terminology to the vocabulary employed in psychopathology: a linguistic unit in use in everyday language and when employed in a technical or scientific field leaves the everyday language for the technical language. In other words, the WORD requires the status of a TERM. The qualifying adjective is chosen as a paradigm. These adjectives which describe patients have been taken from various publications. The results indicate that from a semiologic point of view, the reluctance that psychopathologists have in using-with some exceptions in the psychiatric field-words as terms i.e. in an absolute and monosemic way. The author interprets this concern for the conservation of the mobility and polysemy of everyday vocabulary as a specific congruence between the discipline and the speeches of specialists: if psychopathology has few (or no) pathognomic signs, psychopathologists wish to handle their semantic field with great flexibility.