Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The article discusses thirteen entries in the manuscript of Chyliński’s translation of the New Testament that can be attributed to shipbuilding terminology: arklinas, bartos, krywułey, paras, Reanes, rudelis, rupa, ſelewiney, sparey, stoba, styrbarkey, trielbanga and zieza. The majority of these words is glossed in Polish, one in Latin (krywułey), and three (Reanes, sparey, trielbanga) have no indication of meaning. Most of the lemmas have not yet been recorded lexicographically or only in meanings other than those used here. The study analyses the word forms morphologically and aims at a better understanding of their meaning. It investigates their etymology and word history against the background of shipbuilding terminology in the Baltic Sea region of the 17th century. Even though many of the terms are words borrowed from Polish or Germanic, possibly through the mediation of Polish, it turns out that hardly any of the word forms are linguistically unambiguous and that hybrid formations, crossbreeding and etymological folk reinterpretations must be taken in consideration.