Trzecie rozważania nad Słowami prawnymi w rzeczy sobie podobnymi Bartłomieja Groickiego

The present text investigates the history of Polish legal vocabulary. The starting point, for the third time, is the state attested in Bartłomiej Groicki’s (1519–1605) Słowa prawne w rzeczy sobie podobne. This time, the field of document names is examined and discussed against a wide temporal background. The field is characterized by rich synonymy as it evolved constantly, together with the development of secretarial work, and absorbed ever new lexical units, mostly from Latin which for very long was the language of legal literature and offices in Poland. The structure of the field is complex: apart from the hyperonymic level – which constitutes the common denominator for all of the componenets of the field (e.g. dokument ‘document’, list ‘letter’), four subfields can be distinguished: the subfield of names of copies (e.g. ekstrakt ‘extract’, kopia ‘copy’, wypis ‘excerpt’), names of lists (e.g. inwentarz ‘inventory’, rejestr ‘register’), names of receipts (cyrograf ‘bond’, kwit ‘receipt’), names of documents authorizing security (glejt, pasbrif ‘safe conduct’), and finally various semantically isolated names (kontrakt ‘contract’, testament ‘will’). The names dowód ‘argument’ and świadectwo ‘testimony’ summarize the entire field.