Iš karybos terminų istorijos
From the history of military terms

Summary/Abstract: A preliminary overview of the abundant material of military terms from the earlier period of the written Lithuanian language allows some general conclusions and a few specific conclusions to be drawn on the subject.Old military terms reach a distant past and reflect the wars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian and Prussia with other countries. Military men and weaponry were named using special terms, which were quite frequently coming Irom Western European languages.Military terms are of a different age: the oldest are inherited from Indo-European (karas (war)) and Baltic parent language (kalavijas (sword)), the newer ones are not only own, but also borrowed terms. Lithuanian terms make a smaller part. Slavonicisms are more frequent borrowings (talking of which, they are also more frequent in sources from Lithuania Minor, at least from the earlier period), Germanisms are slightly less frequent.The comparison of the meanings of old and currently used military terms obviously illustrates semantic changes: not one term (karininkas (officer), karžygys (warrior), pulkininkas (colonel)) has gained a new meaning.It is topical to continue the research of military terms. That would reveal not only their history, but probably it could make the origin, word-formation and meaning development of modern Lithuanian military terms clearer.

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