EN
Distinguishing continuations from past borrowings in the Polish-East Slavic borderland is not always an easy task. The material involved is very diverse. In the case of the lexeme *bdo ‘rigid heddle in a loom’ the decisive factor is the form: the relic bardo is a native word, whereas the forms berda, bierda, berdo and bierdo are borrowings appearing in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, in newly settled areas of north and northwest Poland but also, secondarily, in Masuria and Warmia. The borrowed name for ‘thistle’ has the phonetically foreign form of bodiak as well as Polonised forms bodak and bodziak, theoretically likewise possibile in Polish. In Polish dialects these forms are usually confounded, making it impossible to delineate any sort of boundary; they are also richly attested in written Polish. The names for ‘forehead’: the East Slavic *lъbъ and *čelo in the remaining territories do in their turn dichotomise the Slavic area, with the eastern-Polandattested łeb being a borrowing, and the enclaves of the name *čelo in East Slavic dialects constituting a former native relic. The appearances of the word wyszki, meaning ‘attic over a barn or a sty, built of logs or boards and used for storing Hay or straw’, which today seems like a borrowing from Belarusian or Ukrainian, are in fact relics of the word’s once wide range in Polish dialects.