obywatel

Polish

Etymology

    Borrowed from Czech obyvatel.[1][2][3] First attested in 1511–1540}.[4] Displaced Middle Polish obywaciel due to Czech and Ukrainian influence. Compare Slovak obyvateľ, Russian обыва́тель (obyvátelʹ).

    Pronunciation

     
    • IPA(key): /ɔ.bɘˈva.tɛl/
    • Audio:(file)
    • Rhymes: -atɛl
    • Syllabification: o‧by‧wa‧tel

    Noun

    obywatel m pers (female equivalent obywatelka, related adjective obywatelski)

    1. citizen (legally-recognized subject or national of a state, with associated rights and obligations; a person considered in terms of this role)
      Synonym: (Middle Polish) obywaciel
    2. (literary) citizen (resident of a city or town, especially one with legally-recognized rights or duties)
    3. (historical) term of respect used for men chiefly during the Polish People's Republic era
      Synonym: pan

    Declension

    Derived terms

    nouns
    adjectives
    adverbs
    • obywatelsko
    nouns
    verbs

    Descendants

    • Kashubian: òbëwatel
    • Silesian: ôbywatel

    Trivia

    According to Słownik frekwencyjny polszczyzny współczesnej (1990), obywatel is one of the most used words in Polish, appearing 6 times in scientific texts, 21 times in news, 58 times in essays, 9 times in fiction, and 20 times in plays, each out of a corpus of 100,000 words, totaling 114 times, making it the 535th most common word in a corpus of 500,000 words.[5]

    References

    1. ^ Boryś, Wiesław (2005), “obywatel”, in Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego (in Polish), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, →ISBN
    2. ^ Mańczak, Witold (2017), “obywatel”, in Polski słownik etymologiczny (in Polish), Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, →ISBN
    3. ^ Bańkowski, Andrzej (2000), “obywatel”, in Etymologiczny słownik języka polskiego [Etymological Dictionary of the Polish Language] (in Polish)
    4. ^ Maria Renata Mayenowa; Stanisław Rospond; Witold Taszycki; Stefan Hrabec; Władysław Kuraszkiewicz (2010-2023), “obywatel”, in Słownik Polszczyzny XVI Wieku [A Dictionary of 16th Century Polish]
    5. ^ Ida Kurcz (1990), “obywatel”, in Słownik frekwencyjny polszczyzny współczesnej [Frequency dictionary of the Polish language]‎[1] (in Polish), volume 1, Kraków; Warszawa: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Języka Polskiego, page 307

    Further reading