Z zagadnień leksyki ekspresywnej – syc, czyli skąpiec
Issues in expressive lexicon – syc, or miser

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines the word syc, which in its primary meaning denotes a mean, stingy person. A member of the group of expressive designations for people, this lexical unit can be found in the speech of the inhabitants of south-eastern Poland. It is unknown to standard Polish; contemporary dictionaries do not contain a similar entry, but its presence in the language is confirmed by historical sources. It belongs to the colloquial variant of Polish and occurs almost exclusively in those linguistic /contacts which emerge in casual situations. The word is well established in the vocabulary of the inhabitants of south-eastern Poland, as is witnessed by its rich lexical family: sycowaty, sycowski ‘miserly’, sycostwo ‘miserliness’, sycować ‘to act miserly’. The lexeme syc is an example of a unit which has survived since the Old Polish period thanks to dialects, and then penetrated into the colloquial variant of Polish, even if restricted to a limited territory.

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