dictionary.pdf

A STUDENT'S

POLISH-ENGLISH

DICTIONARY

A web-based Polish language-learning resource, with

Polish-English and English-Polish search capability.

Oscar E. Swan

University of Pittsburgh

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval 

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the 

prior permission in writing from the author.

CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT <SWAN@PITT.EDU>

INTRODUCTION

A Student’s Polish-English Dictionary is a web-oriented resource

intended for the English-speaking learner of Polish interested in arriving at

the central and commonest meanings of a word. Designed to overcome the

shortcomings, for learners of Polish, of Polish-English dictionaries written

by and intended for native-speaking Poles, this work contains at present

over 30,000 entries and is constantly growing. It does not attempt complete

coverage of archaic or slang words; technical or scientific terms outside the

range of common usage; names of uncommon plants and animals; most

geographic designations; the latest in international borrowings; obcenities

and vulgarisms. However, most terms related to the social sciences and the

humanities are included.

A conservative approach has been applied to the inclusion of recent

transparent borrowings from American popular culture, technology, and

business, although some, like laptop , are included. The technical apparatus

is kept to a minimum and should be mostly self-evident to the English-

speaking learner. The user is expected to be familiar with the principles of

Polish inflection, hence regular and predictable endings and formations are

not given. For a detailed description of Polish grammar, the user is referred

to the author's Grammar of Contemporary Polish (Slavica: 2002), or to his

shorter Polish Verbs and Essentials of Grammar (McGraw-Hill 2007).

USING THE ON-LINE SEARCH ENGINE

The search engine can be set to either Polish-English or English-

Polish. Polish words are given a generous number of English glosses. The

search engine allows for exact word matches, for exact string matches, or

for “fuzzy” (best available) matches. Delineate exact words and strings with

the symbols ^ (left-hand delineator) and $ (right-hand delineator). Using ^

or $ by themselves searches for left-anchored and right-anchored strings,

respectively. You may cut and paste words or strings from an on-line text

into the search window. If you are “feeling lucky,” the quickest way to

initiate a search is by darkening a word in an on-line text and hitting the

Control key. You may hand-type words into the search window in one of

two ways: (1) by using a Unicode Eastern European font in combination

with a Polish keyboard; (2) by clicking the characters in the Polish alphabet

displayed above the search window, one by one.

It is often quickest to enter a left-hand match up to the point in a

word where inflection begins to alter the word-stem. If a search yields no

useful results, try entering the apparent internal root of the word. The

revolving-cog icon shows that a search is underway. “Hits” will be displayed

in the order encountered in the dictionary (there is a limit of 100 hits per

search). Clicking on an entry in the results window brings up that line in the

full dictionary on the left, so that closely related items may be examined

and compared in the main dictionary without having to initiate another

search.

HOW THIS DICTIONARY WAS WRITTEN

The present dictionary more or less wrote itself over the course of a

number of years, as vocabulary lists from various Polish language

textbooks, frequency lists, readers, and works from contemporary

literature, film, and mass media were successively added to a constantly

growing master list of words. With the inclusion of vocabulary from the

author's W labiryncie In the Labyrinth (a textbook based on a Polish

television soap opera), the short-story collection Opowieści mojej żony

Tales of my Wife by Miros∏aw ˚urawski, and the filmscripts of Krzysztof

Kieślowski's ten-part film series Dekalog The Decalogue, the word-list

began to assume the appearance of a real dictionary, containing around

20,000 words. Subsequently, logical gaps were filled (for example, in the

numeral and pronoun systems), and cross-references were added to help

link verbal aspect pairs. Sweeps were made through various Polish-only

dictionaries, bringing the entry-count to around 25,000. Especially useful

was Elżbieta Sobol's Podręczny s∏ownik języka polskiego A Concise

Dictionary of Polish (PWN, Warsaw, 1996). Since that time, the dictionary

has been slowly expanding from the author's reading of contemporary

Polish authors and the press. The result is a dictionary that contains more

than 30,000 entries — including almost all words of any frequency in

contemporary Polish, augmented by many less frequent words which reflect

the author’s personal reading habits and preferences.

To a certain if sporadic extent, the English-Polish capability of this

dictionary has been enhanced by searching specifically for English words of

a more formal or literary nature that might have been otherwise

overlooked. In this endeavor the Kościuszko Foundation’s English-Polish

Dictionary proved particularly useful. For example, a search in this

dictionary for rejoinder led to the addition of the Polish word riposta and its

inclusion as a gloss under replika .

A user-author interface has been included to allow users to make

suggestions and corrections. The author happily entertains all proposals and

will implement them, as long as they meet, or can be modified to meet, the

presentational structure, and the spirit and aims of the work: to help

English-speaking learn and use Polish.

PRINCIPLES OF CITATION

Every effort has been made to make the technical apparatus

transparent and unobtrusive, while remianing grammatically informative.

Within a word-entry, the derivationally basic form of a word is given first.

Derived forms considered to belong to the same lexical item are given next,

regardless of alphabetical order. If a form is radically different in

alphabetical order from the base word, it will be listed separately and given

a cross-reference. Regularly derivable forms are not listed separately unless

a regularly predictable form is nevertheless apt to cause confusion. For

example, the locative singular of ocet , occie , is listed, with a reference to

ocet , because, even though the form is regular, its visual appearance makes

the word difficult to decipher.

A tilda is used to represent the head-word in phrasal illustrations, as in

kamieƒ mi -a stone, rock, flint, gem. szlachetny ~ gem-stone

If the head-word is illustrated in a different gender or case-form, then the

right-hand part of the word will be taken back to a letter held in common,

as in

bia∏y aj white. do ~∏ego rana till the break of day

VERBS

Verb conjugation is indicated by giving the 1st and 2nd person sg. forms

of the the present, along with any other irregular present or past forms. The

conjugation of prefixed mono-syllabic verbs is sometimes indicated by

referring to the simplex verb. For example, the following entry indicates

that donieść is conjugated like nieść :

donieść ^nieść pf, impf donosić -szę -sisz o+L inform or report on

If a verb occurs only or mainly in the 3rd person, only the 3rd person

singular (neuter) will be given. See, for example,

b∏yskać -a us 3p impf, pf b∏ysnąć -śnie b∏ys∏o shine, flash, twinkle.

Aspect pairs are given in the order basic: derived, regardless of

alphabetical considerations. If this decision causes an alphabetization

problem, then the derived aspect form is listed separately, with a cross

reference. See, for example

irytować -tuję -tujesz impf, pf zirytować irritate

with the derived perfective zirytować also having its own listing, with

reference to irytować . In general, common prefixed perfective forms of a

simplex imperfective verb will be listed twice, both with the base verb and

as a cross-reference. In the listing

narazić ^razić pf, impf narażać endanger. na+A expose to

the basic perfective form is given first, followed by the derived imperfective.

Here no separate listing for narażać is needed, since no other words fall

between it and the head word narazić.

Aspect pairs in -ać -ąć are usually listed in this order; see

bąkać -am -asz impf, pf bąknąć -nę -niesz , mumble, blurt out.

However, if the root of the form in -ać is altered by overt derivational

processes, the verb will be given under the form in -nąć , as in

wytknąć -nę -niesz pf, impf wytykać +D reproach

with wytykać also given in a cross-reference. As this entry shows, derived

imperfectives in -ać are assumed to belong to the - am -asz type unless

otherwise indicated.

NOUNS

Possible second forms of a noun, often abbreviated, are used to indicate

mobile vowels or vowel alternations in stems. The second form will be

either genitive singular (for masculine nouns or feminine nouns ending in a

consonant, or genitive plural (for feminine nouns in -a and neuter nouns).

See

b∏ąd b∏ędu mi error, mistake

szk∏o szkie∏ n glass

pole pól n field

świstek -tka mi scrap of paper.

Nouns listed as mi 'masculine inanimate' are assumed to have genitive

singular in -u unless noted otherwise. See

przegląd mi review, survey

stolik mi -a small table, night table, end table.

Nouns listed as ma 'masculine animate' are assumed to have genitive-

accusative singular in -a . See

aporter ma retriever (dog)

Nouns described as m fac an 'masculine, facultatively animate' ordinarily

take genitive-accusative singular in -a :

papieros m fac an cigarette.

Nouns listed as mp pej 'masculine personal, pejorative' typically do not

soften the stem consonant in the nominative plural, as

świntuch mp pej scoundrel, swine.

Feminine personal nouns with a derivationally primary male variant are not

usually separately glossed; see

radios∏uchaczka -czek fem of radios∏uchacz

with its reference to

radios∏uchacz mp radio listener

Plural-only nouns are indicated as such with the tag pl form:

igrzyska pl form G igrzysk games. ~ olimpijskie Olympic Games.

Singular-only nouns are not specifically marked unless practice would be

different in one language and the other:

refleks mi us-sg reflex(es).

Ambiguous English glosses are resolved either by giving a second gloss or

by a parenthical remark:

szermierz mp fencer, swordsman

rozciąg∏y aj wide open (space)

nacios mi blaze (on tree)

The marker colloq covers a wide range of usage, ranging from mainly

spoken to slang. Similarly, vulg covers a wide range, from crude to highly

offensive and obscene. A non-native speaker should always err on the side

of caution in using words of either sort.

ADJECTIVES

Adverbial and comparative forms of adjectives are listed under the

heading of the adjective, regardless of alphabetical considerations. For

example, under szeroki , one will find the comparative adjective szerszy and

the comparative adverb szerzej . These two forms are also listed separately,

with reference to szeroki . See

krew krwi f blood

stó∏ sto∏u mi table

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