Who Is a Seductress? A Cognitive Approach to the Synonyms of Seductress

Abstract

In the history of English there have been a number of terms referring to a mysterious and enticing lady whose charm entraps her lovers, frequently leading them into dangerous situations. Indubitably, femme fatale is an archetype of such a female both in literature and art. Her ability to enchant and hypnotize males was in the earliest stories even seen as supernatural, therefore nowadays such ladies are associated with vampires, witches or even demons. The main aim of the paper is to discuss the semantic history of a handful of lexical items that might be used in the sense ‘a seductive woman’ and analyse them from a cognitive angle. In particular, we shall focus on such simple words as siren, derivatives seductress and enchantress, two borrowings, that is femme fatale and coquette, one abbreviation, namely vamp and – last but not least – a handful of proper nouns, namely Circe, Lorelei and Jezebel.