This article attempts to explain the causes of the formation and preservation of the polysemy of the verb czuć (to feel, to smell, to taste, to see) by using the knowledge of synesthesia from various scientific disciplines. The ambiguity of the verb can be justified by the metaphorical extension of the concrete senses over abstract ones and the preservation of the remains of the original way of sensing when, at a certain stage, the received stimuli and the accompanying emotions or thoughts are not differentiated or specified. D. Buttlerowa clarifies that such a situation is a reflection of the synthetic and sensational perception of the world characterising the old ethne and every human being in infantry and early childhood. The combination of impressions coming from different senses facilitates learn ing, memorising and acquiring language early in life. Giving consideration to research from various disciplines of science permits the discernment of the reasonability to preserve the ambiguity of czuć and understanding of its cause rather than perceiving it as an example of denying the tendency for clarity and precision in language.
In the paper eight names for ‘pupil of the eye’ that comes from local dialects or cants of Polish language, namely: pupilla, puppa, pupka, panienka, lalka, babka, człowieczek, mężyk, and their cognate names are lexically and semantically described. All such nouns refer to the concept of the human being that can be supposedly observed in the “pupil of the eye”. The wide belief in such a concept give the naming of this part of the eye in the Polish language. Such mechanism has been observed in all considered nouns. As discussed nouns have been confirmed in various, not always overlapping areas of Poland and periods of time, we refer to their historical and local dialects’ sources. As some among such nouns have local Polish, others – foreign background, we put special attention to their etymology, word-formative processes and the source language. The noun commonly used in the literature for ‘pupil of the eye’ derive from the verb źrzeć (see Piotrowska, Zawadzka in press) and points at the function of this part of the eye. The fact that in Polish local dialects and in Polish literature so distinct concepts for the source of the name of ‘pupil-of-the-eye’ occurred may indicate the contradiction between the local and foreign sources that affected dialects and literary language in different ways.
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