Slavic Languages in Contact, 1: Tobacco – Some Slavic Designations in Their Areal Context

Tobacco was certainly one of the most popular drug products in Europe until the end of the 20th century. Nevertheless, our knowledge of the history of its designations is fairly often limited to general statements like, for instance, “from Spanish” (for English tobacco) or “from Turkish” (for Polish tytoń) and so on. This author aims at establishing some lexicological areas displaying various influences on the Slavic languages in that respect, as well as providing critical assessment of earlier claims and presenting his own observations concerning the Slavic designations of ‘tobacco’.