The Linguistic History of the Word kufajka // fufajka

Abstract

The word kufajka//fufajka (a kind of warm clothe, formerly mostly for workers, today also an outerwear) is a more recent borrowing from the Russian language. The form of kufajka was not arbitrarily coined by one of journalists (as B. Rejakowa claimed in an article on fashion vocabulary). The kufajka was not formed from the word fufajka as a result of dissimilation (see e.g. J. Miodek). We have borrowed the two variants from the Russian language. The Russian фуфайка//куфайка can be derived from *chuchajka, cf. the verb хухать ‘breathe with warmth’, Pol. chuchać (following P. Ya. Chernykh’s etymological dictionary).