Hazard i hazardzista w historii języka polskiego
Hazard [‘gambling’] and hazardzista [‘gambler’] in the history of Polish

Summary/Abstract: Subject to investigations in this article is the historical development of the Polish lexeme hazard, which marks the center of the semantic field that covers onomastic expressions for names of gambling activities, people engaged in gambling, types of games, and venues where gambling was arranged. Dictionary research supplemented with corpus linguistic study allowed drawing a lexical map that up until the 17th century gravitated around the lexemes igracz, kostarz, kostyra and szuler, all of which were names of players taking risks and cheating in dice or cards. Through historical development, this initial network was expanded to cover the word hazard in its primary meaning of ‘incident, fate’, accompanied with related forms such as hazardzista, hazardowny, hazardować (się). Finally, in the late 20th century, the notion of ‘gambling for money’ was institutionalized as another semantic variant. The lexicographic explorations in the article are completed with the context analysis of the phenomenon of gambling, disclosing its temporally unchangeable semantic context and social perception.

• Details
• Contents