Polish etymology

Title: How many Polish cognates does Hung. bánt ‘to torment’ have?
Keywords: Hungarian etymology, Polish etymology, German etymology

The paper investigates the etymology of two words which many authors have regarded as poly-semes: OPol. bantować ‘to punish (with exile)’ (attested four times in decrees of punishment, from 1475 to 1500, and there is one attestation from 1519 the meaning of which remains uncertain) and MPol. ~ Pol. dial. bantować which, generally speaking, means ‘to torment’ (attested since 1614). Interpreted as polysemes, they were both explained as a single loan word from Hung. bánt ‘to torment.’ However, the semantics of the Hungarian word speaks against this interpretation: Hung. bánt was never used as a legal term meaning ‘to punish with exile.’ It seems possible that the Old Polish word is a loan word from MHG bannen ‘to punish with exile, to banish’ even though the issue of -t- and the lack of the expected g- in the Polish form remains, for the time being, open. The medial -t- may be a remnant of the final -t in the MHG past participle *gebannt, as was suggested by DE VINCENZ – HENTSCHEL (2010), or a result of a blend with OPol. ochtowan ‘exiled, banished’. The latter was only attested once in 1500 in the exactly same sentence that also contains OPol. bantowan ‘punished with exile’ (see SStp I 60). It does not seem groundless, then, to claim that OPol. bantować ‘to punish (with exile)’ and MPol. bantować ‘to torment, etc.’ (the latter being still in use in the contemporary dialects of southern Lesser Poland) are neither poly-semes as they have different roots, nor homonyms as they have never been used at the same time and place.

The present article presents an etymological discussion on Cz. tábor ‘(military) camp’ and its cognates present in a wide range of European and Asian languages. It is argued that Pol. tabor ‘(military) camp’ is rather not a Hungarian loanword (from Hung. tábor id.) as was claimed in a number of works dealing with Hungarian loanwords in Polish. The main aim for revisiting the etymology is to prove, based on a thorough philological argumentation, that the claim that the first written occurrence of the Hung. word in appellative meaning dates back to 1383 is erroneous. This circumstance invalidates the arguments put forward to weaken the word’s Czech etymology (Pol., Hung. < Cz. Tábor ‘1. Mount Tabor; 2. ‘(military) camp’).

The paper investigates the etymology of two words which many authors have regarded as poly-semes: OPol. bantować ‘to punish (with exile)’ (attested four times in decrees of punishment, from 1475 to 1500, and there is one attestation from 1519 the meaning of which remains uncertain) and MPol. ~ Pol. dial. bantować which, generally speaking, means ‘to torment’ (attested since 1614). Interpreted as polysemes, they were both explained as a single loan word from Hung. bánt ‘to torment.’ However, the semantics of the Hungarian word speaks against this interpretation: Hung. bánt was never used as a legal term meaning ‘to punish with exile.’ It seems possible that the Old Polish word is a loan word from MHG bannen ‘to punish with exile, to banish’ even though the issue of -t- and the lack of the expected g- in the Polish form remains, for the time being, open. The medial -t- may be a remnant of the final -t in the MHG past participle *gebannt, as was suggested by DE VINCENZ – HENTSCHEL (2010), or a result of a blend with OPol. ochtowan ‘exiled, banished’. The latter was only attested once in 1500 in the exactly same sentence that also contains OPol. bantowan ‘punished with exile’ (see SStp I 60). It does not seem groundless, then, to claim that OPol. bantować ‘to punish (with exile)’ and MPol. bantować ‘to torment, etc.’ (the latter being still in use in the contemporary dialects of southern Lesser Poland) are neither poly-semes as they have different roots, nor homonyms as they have never been used at the same time and place.