Bogoslav Šulek

Bogoslav Šulek (born Bohuslav Šulek; April 20, 1816 – November 30, 1895) was a Croatian philologist, historian and lexicographer. He was very influential in creating Croatian terminology in the areas of social and natural sciences, technology and civilization.

Early career Šulek was born to an ethnic Slovak family. He was born in Sobotište Šulek held pro-Yugoslav views. He liberally coined neologisms and borrowed words from other Slavic languages to serve as replacements for non-Slavic loanwords. When a Shtokavian word for a loanword was not available, he drew upon Chakavian and Kajkavian lexical stock, and when those were insufficient he borrowed words from other Slavic languages such as Czech, Slovak, Russian and Slovene, or proposed his own neologisms. His activities often drew him to conflict with Croatian Vukovians who advocated pure folk language and derisively called his neologisms and borrowings šulekizmi ("Šulekisms").

Despite their initial unpopularity, most of Šulek's new vocabulary slowly entered into common parlance of Croatian upper classes throughout the 20th century; many of these words are nowadays considered standard Croatian expressions for various concepts.

Most of his coinages used in modern Croatian include words in chemistry (kisik "oxygen", vodik "hydrogen", dušik "nitrogen") and other technical fields (plin "gas", plinomjer "gas meter", narječje "dialect", glazba "music", skladba "composition", obrazac "template; form", sustav "system", tlak "pressure", tlakomjer "barometer", zemljovid "map", uzor "role model", pojam "concept", tvrtka "company", uradak "piece of work", zdravstvo "healthcare").

Works "Deutsch-kroatisches Worterbuch - Njemačko-ilirski rječnik", I. - II. (Zagreb, 1860) - German-Croatian Dictionary "Hrvatsko-njemačko-talijanski rječnik znanstvenoga nazivlja", I. - II. (Zagreb, 1874/75; reprint: Zagreb, 1995) - Croatian-German-Italian Dictionary of Scientific Terms "Jugoslavenski imenik bilja", (Zagreb, 1879.) - Yugoslavian Plant Lexicon