From the history of Polish lexical items kabała ‘Kabbalah/cabala, future-telling’, stawiać kabałę ‘to tell future’, and others

Abstract

The article discusses semantic shifts in the Polish lexical item kabała ‘Kabbalah/cabala’ and related units: kabalistyka ‘Kabbalism’, kabalista ‘Kabbalist, fortune-teller’, wpaść w kabałę ‘get oneself into a bad fix’, stawiać kabałę ‘to tell future’. With time, these items became dissociated from their primary meanings and changed the semantic domain from religious (or even mystical) to colloquial. The study shows the origin and the paths of semantic development of these word-forms, as well as transformations in the linguistic awareness (worldview) of the speakers of Polish.