O sobie samych – z historii przestępczych nazw złodziei (na materiale z XIX wieku)

Abstract

The article concerns the history of Polish criminal jargon. The author presented 68 names of thieves. He extracted linguistic material from 19th‑century texts, but some of the collected units are much older. The author presented the provenance of the names and characterized the material in formal and semantic terms. The author drew attention to the territorial diversity of names – their functioning in the speech of criminals operating in different partitions and their fate after the unification of various parts of Poland. Among the names discussed are, for example: andrus, klawiszarz, pajęczeniarz, szpringer, marwicher, jold.