Kras – a polysemous term with international recognition

The term kras (karst) has three implications in the Slovenian language: it appears as a topographical name for theKras (Karst) region or the Kras (Karst) Plateau, as an appellative denoting a rocky landscape and as a technical term»karst« used in karstology. Karstology as a scientific discipline started to develop on the key examples from the Sloveniankarst. Consequently, Slovenian terms denoting various karst features were passed into international karstologicalterminology. In the Slovenian language the Karst is also referred to as the »Mother Karst« in the sense of »the cradleof karst«; the area between Vrhnika and Trieste, where the first karst features were described, is called the ClassicalKarst. The term stands for a typical karst landscape and prototypical relief, whose features are treated by contemporarykarstology as typical or basic (classical) and to which all other karstic features throughout the world are compared.