SKRZYDLATE SŁOWA, "TWORY PRZYSŁOWIOPODOBNE" CZY PRZYSŁOWIA? NOWE PRZYSŁOWIA ANGIELSKIE WE WSPÓŁCZESNEJ POLSZCZYŹNIE
Winged Words, 'Proverbial Creations' or Proverbs? New English Proverbs in Contemporary Polish

Summary/Abstract: The subject of this article is the use of sayings considered to be contemporary English proverbs in Polish, and their status in Polish. The appearance of new proverbs in Polish, both native and borrowed from other languages, has not received much scholarly attention. The present analysis concerns 9 sayings regarded as new proverbs in Anglo-American paremiology. These are: Gentlemen prefer blondes, Diamonds are a girl's best friends, It takes two to tango, If you can't have what you like, you must like what you have,There's no such thing as a free lunch, The murderer [criminal] always returns to the scene of the crime, Figures don't lie, The camera doesn't lie, You can't tell a book by its cover. The first four are included in the collection Skrzydlate Słowa (Winged Words) by H. Markiewicz and A. Romanowski (Cracow 2005), the other ones are not listed in any collections of 'winged words', Polish proverbs or proverbial phrases. The study is based on the author's corpus of Polish Internet sources, comprising online versions of newspaper articles, political, economic and social commentaries, various Internet forums, and advertisements. In the analyzed sources, the sayings appear with such qualifiers as 'a proverb', 'a folk saying' and are used as to comment on various social situations, which suggests that they have acquired the status of proverbs in the intuitive judgments of many Polish people.

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