Slavic languages and literature

(= Polish pantałyk and its Eastern Slavic, Slovak, and Moravian counterparts. Remarks about the origin).  --  Summary: The Polish word pantałyk is only used in the expression zbić z pantałyku ‘put sb off his stride, confuse, upset, disconcert’ (lit ‘strike sb off the pantałyk’) The original meaning and the etymology of the word have been unknown, and this is also valid for Moravian, Slovak and Eastern Slavonic. This author argues that it primarily was a riding term ‘crupper’, composed of a German loanword with a Slavonic suffix.

Since most European students of Turkic linguistics start their university training with a course of Turkish they first learn that the Turkish word balyk ‹balık› means 'fish.' It therefore stands to reason that they feel most surprised when they are told in an Old Turkic course that balyk means both 'wall' and 'town, city' in Old Turkic. One can hardly understand how three meanings as different as 'fish' and 'wall' or 'town' are expressed by one and the same word, and thus the idea immediately suggests itself that at least one of these words is probably (or certainly) borrowed into Old Turkic from a foreign language that is apparently unknown to the student. Besides, there is only one possible phonetic association, that with Turkish bal 'honey' but this does not seem to make much sense.