Szesnastowieczne frazeologizmy z nazwami ptaków we współczesnej polszczyźnie

Abstract

The subject of the article is sixteenth century idiomatic expressions with the names of birds functioning in contemporary Polish. Eleven units of that time were noted down, which in comparison to the sixteenth century composition of that idiom branch (about 120 units) constitutes almost ten per cent. What survived included above all idiomatic expressions having a comprehensible lexical composition, easy to remember (short, rhymed, with alliterations), and of a fabulous or ancient provenance, as well as represented by big textual frequency (at least 20 to over 60 entries) and variancy. Unstable, on the other hand, appeared those units with archaic lexical components, referring to the conventional layer that is not clear nowadays (especially fishing techniques and beliefs), having a complex syntactic structure (too long, and devoid of rhymes and alliterations) as well as those that were not accepted in a language for unknown reasons (they were rarely repeated, and had little variants).