DOM na warsztacie etymologa, archeologa i badacza językowego obrazu świata

This article is a side-result of a current large-scale research work on the Axiological Lexicon of the Slavs and their Neighbors. As the “house” is one of the entries included in the Dictionary, the author draws attention to three words preserved in the Slavic languages that should be recognized as the ones that refer to the original human household. They include (a) the South Slavic names that derive from the Proto-Slavic word *ktja, related to the Proto-Slavic form *ktъ ‘the internal angle of the house’; (b) the Polish dialectal word that is recognized as an alleged Old Prussian relic of the lexeme kuk(u)rzysko ‘the place where formerly an old house was located’, ‘the hearth in a forge’; (c) the Proto Slavic word *jьstъba ‘a heated living room’, ‘a dugout’, ‘a cottage’, ‘home’, originally derived from the folk Latin form *extŭfa/*extūfa ‘primitive steam baths’. The etymology of these words is confirmed by archaeological research which indicate that that the earliest households used by the Slavs had the form of a rectangular dugout with a fire place in the corner. The linguistic image of the world clearly mirrors the reality of the former times: all the words that are analyzed in the article refer to a place where the primary role is played by fire, the donor of heat and food that brings together the residents of the first primitive households built in this area.