Etymológia a kultúrna história: pišišvor
Etymology and Cultural History: Word "Pišišvor"

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the etymology of the Slovak expressive pišišvor "narrow­-minded, unimportant person (usually as term of abuse); small (strange) creature, usually animal or insect, oddity". This word, pre­viously attested in Slovak dialects (as early as 1938) and in Slovak slang, was also included into the academic Dictionary of the Contemporary Slovak Language (vol. 4, 2021). The author accepts the explanation (cf. already Holub – Lyer, 1968) that the word - also known in Czech - goes back to the name of Emanuel Pyšišvor, a Czech fictitious author of satirical poetry pub­lished in Prague in the 1870s who, in his poems, labelled himself as "mostmiserable creature of the world"; in folk culture, the surname Pyšišvor (of obscure etymology) evolved into the common name pišišvor in which a se­mantic shift "(of a person, creature) miserable" > "lower in quality, inferior; strange, odd, etc." seems to have taken place.

• Details
• Contents