EN
The paper examines the word syc, which in its primary meaning denotes a mean, stingy person. A member of the group of expressive designations for people, this lexical unit can be found in the speech of the inhabitants of south-eastern Poland. It is unknown to standard Polish; contemporary dictionaries do not contain a similar entry, but its presence in the language is confirmed by historical sources. It belongs to the colloquial variant of Polish and occurs almost exclusively in those linguistic contacts which emerge in casual situations. The word is well established in the vocabulary of the inhabitants of south-eastern Poland, as is witnessed by its rich lexical family: sycowaty, sycowski ‘miserly’, sycostwo ‘miserliness’, sycować ‘to act miserly’. The lexeme syc is an example of a unit which has survived since the Old Polish period thanks to dialects, and then penetrated into the colloquial variant of Polish, even if restricted to a limited territory.