A Short History of the Word kudyś

Abstract

In the paper I discuss the history of the word kudyś “drunkard, loafer.” In the second half of the nineteenth century it is found in the local and folk dialects of eastern Poland, probably from the Russian language. Considering several etymological possibilities, the most probable one is that the word was borrowed. In the end of the twentieth century it appeared in the folk dialects in south Podlasia as an internal borrowing from the urban dialects.