Czy bachur/bachor przybył do Polski ze Wschodu?

The article is a voice in a dispute begun by R. Rosół (W sprawie etymologii rzeczownika bachor [On the etymology of the noun bachor ], „Język Polski” LXXXIX, 2009, issue 4−5) and continued by Marek Stachowski (Kilka uwag o kwestii żydowskich i słowiańskich źródeł polskiego bachor [On some possible Jewish and Slavonic sources of the Polish word bachor). The author is prone to accept an affi rma tive answer to the question in the title. Studying the history of the word bachor/bachur in East- -Slavic languages meaning child, Jewish child, Jewish youth, young Jew, he fi nds that old western- Ruthenian writings (16th−18th centuries) as well as lexicographic sources (19th−20th centuries) offer a wealth of examples of the lexeme in question in a number of forms and semantic-stylistic variants. This testifi es to its active and expansive status in East-Slavic territory (except Russia). That bachor/bachur is an East-Slavic import into Polish is suggested by the following arguments: a) earlier chronology of the word and its derivatives in western-Ruthenian texts than in Polish, meaning Jewish boy, youth; b) the existence of three phonetic variants found in old western-Ruthenian texts: бахуръ, бахоръ, бехуръ against two in Polish: bachur, bachor; c) its much greater derivational activity in East-Slavic languages, cf. Ukr. derivatives: бахурчик, бáхурка, бaхурн’я, бахурувáти, бахурувáтий, бахурчá, бахурн’ятський, Belorus. бáхурка, бахуравáць, бáхурoк, бáхурство; Pol. bachorzę, bachorzy, bachorek, bachoro, bachorzec (the last three forms confi rmed in Słownik gwar polskich [Dictionary of Polish dialects] I: 244–249); d) the word’s richer range of senses in western- -Ruthenian languages (including metaphorical senses) than in Polish, cf. Belorus.-Ukr.: young Jew, boy; urchin; child, Jewish child; bastard; womanizer, fl irter, lover; pot-bellied person; uncastrated hog; incubated chicken; small pillow, Pol. ‘ill-behaved child, brat; Jewish child; illegitimate child; boy, Jewish youth; ordinary stickball player; young hog’. Considering the reasons for the peculiar variance of bachor/bachur both in initial (ba-|| be-) and fi nal positions (-ur || -or), the author concludes that when eastern Slavs borrowed it from Yiddish, the word meaning ‘youth; Jewish child’ fell on favorable ground in homonymic words of Slavic origin. Listed in dictionaries of proto-Slavic, those included: *bachorъ 1 : *bachorь : *bachurъ ‘something swollen, rounded, spherical; belly; stomach in ruminants’, and *bachorъ 2. south-eastern dial. ‘wizard, sorcerer’.