Hunting Vocabulary in the 17th-Century Encyclopaedic Treatise Skład abo skarbiec znakomitych sekretów ekonomijej ziemiańskiej [A Treasury of Magnificent Secrets of Landowner’s Economy] by Jakub Kazimierz Haur

Abstract

This paper discusses a selection of hunting vocabulary collected in the 17^th-century encyclopaedic treatise by Jakub Kazimierz Haur (1689). The following classes of lexemes are subject to analysis: different names related to hunting practices, doers and performers in these practices, hunting equipment as well as the names of the game and the hunting animals. The research has led up to a handful of conclusions. Firstly, it turns out that hunting vocabulary typically reveals native morphological structure. The majority of lexemes are Proto-Slavic, while the borrowings mostly come from Latin or German. Noteworthy is the fact that a lot of words functioning in Standard Polish have developed a specialized, hunting-related meaning through various semantic transformations. From a pragmatic point of view, hunting vocabulary does not only serve communicative purposes, but it also realizes a clarifying and a reductive function.