Wokół najstarszych poświadczeń leksemu interpretacyja

Abstract

The article presents the earliest attestations of the word interptretacyja in the Polish language and addresses incorrect information on this topic found in scholarly and historical literature (cf. Bibliografia). An analysis of the preserved sources – those used in the Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku [Dictionary of the 16th Century Polish Language] – shows that the Latin loanword interptretacyja appears in Polish for the first time in the second half of the 16th century, in the legal work Diariusz sejmowy 1556–1557, where it is recorded twice. In the 16th century, the lexeme interptretacyja occurs a total of four times, exclusively with the meaning of a legal term. This terminological meaning, however, is not indicated in the Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku. According to the materials of the Słownik polszczyzny XVI wieku, the word interpretacyja belongs to very rare vocabulary in the 16th century. Nevertheless, its occurrences should not be interpreted as exceptional or anomalous, since they appear in two legal texts of the same type, originating from different decades of the second half of the 16th century. Although the lexeme interpretacyja (later: interpretacja) may seem unproblematic, misunderstandings have arisen around its earliest attestations, and these have been disseminated by important scholarly works. A reconstruction of the earliest history of the lexeme interptretacyja demonstrates that Andrzej Bańkowski’s [2000] claim regarding a non Latin origin of the word must be rejected. It is likewise incorrect to date the first attestation of this word in Polish to the 18th century (as in the Elektroniczny słownik języka polskiego XVII i XVIII wieku [Electronic Dictionary of 17th and 18th Century Polish]) or to the 19th century [Bańkowski 2000].