# Polish: Μαχαίρι – majcher



## Ben Jamin

Hello,
I am trying to track the origin of the Polish word _Majcher (_knife). The word comes from prison slang in Poland, and is apparently related to the Greek word _Μαχαίρι_ (knife). But how did a Greek word find the way to Polish prison slang?
I have been thinking of the Ukrainian connection (the Odessa Greeks), but I have no clues whatsoever. Does anybody know a similar word in another language (maybe in the Balcan area)?


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## sokol

I have no idea either, I can only offer a guess: Polish prison slang might have been influenced by German Rotwelsch (which is also kind of a prison slang); and German Rotwelsch (which by the way also borrowed from Jiddisch) has some Romanes = Gypsy language borrowings, and Romanes on the other hand borrowed from Greek (some Gypsy dialects only have few Greek words, others have more - depending on their route to Europe).

But unfortunately I don't konw if "majcher" or a similar word exists in Rotwelsch (Google search turned up nothing).


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## Ben Jamin

sokol said:


> I have no idea either, I can only offer a guess: Polish prison slang might have been influenced by German Rotwelsch (which is also kind of a prison slang); and German Rotwelsch (which by the way also borrowed from Jiddisch) has some Romanes = Gypsy language borrowings, and Romanes on the other hand borrowed from Greek (some Gypsy dialects only have few Greek words, others have more - depending on their route to Europe).
> 
> But unfortunately I don't konw if "majcher" or a similar word exists in Rotwelsch (Google search turned up nothing).


 I have been thinking about the Gypsy track too, as I know they absorbed a number of Greek words on their way North, but I have no idea how old the Greek word is, and what the origin of it might be. I do not know any Gypsy dictionary either, so I can not check. So, we can hope to get help from people that are competent in Greek and the Gypsy languages.


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## shawnee

The word has a very long Greek provenance. The biblical 'he who lives by the sword.... is _'Μάχαιρα έλαβες Μάχαιρα θα λάβεις'. _I suspect it goes back even further but I'm not the one to say though there are those on the Greek forum who can. I remain curious as to how it's appearance in Hungarian prison slang has been observed. I mean was it universally used or was it a Greek speaking prisoner perhaps? As far as I know, The Gypsies in Greece speak Greek as well as their own language so I can only wonder as you have done at the journey the word has made.


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## Ben Jamin

shawnee said:


> The word has a very long Greek provenance. The biblical 'he who lives by the sword.... is _'Μάχαιρα έλαβες Μάχαιρα θα λάβεις'. _I suspect it goes back even further but I'm not the one to say though there are those on the Greek forum who can. I remain curious as to how it's appearance in Hungarian prison slang has been observed. I mean was it universally used or was it a Greek speaking prisoner perhaps? As far as I know, The Gypsies in Greece speak Greek as well as their own language so I can only wonder as you have done at the journey the word has made.


 
Thank you for this information. Now we know that the word is at least as old as Biblical Koine. But how it came to Polish (NB not Hungarian) general slang (through prison slang) remains unknown. There are basically three possibilities: the Polish Gypsies took the word with them from Greece to Poland, through Hungary, or it came with Balkan herdsmen through Bulgaria and Romania, or from the Greek colonies in Russia (Crimea, Odessa). It is rather unlikely that the word came via Turkey and Ukraine.

By the way, the word has been immortalized being used in the translation of Bertolt Brecht's song Mackie the Knife (Mackie Majcher fits so well in the place of Mackie Messer).


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## apmoy70

shawnee said:


> The word has a very long Greek provenance. The biblical 'he who lives by the sword.... is _'Μάχαιρα έλαβες Μάχαιρα θα λάβεις'. _I suspect it goes back even further but I'm not the one to say though there are those on the Greek forum who can. I remain curious as to how it's appearance in Hungarian prison slang has been observed. I mean was it universally used or was it a Greek speaking prisoner perhaps? As far as I know, The Gypsies in Greece speak Greek as well as their own language so I can only wonder as you have done at the journey the word has made.


Μάχαιρα is indeed Koine Greek, but μαχαίρι comes from the Byzantine μαχαίρι(ον) which is the diminutive of μάχαιρα. So the word μαχαίρι is not _that_ old.


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## Ben Jamin

apmoy70 said:


> Μάχαιρα is indeed Koine Greek, but μαχαίρι comes from the Byzantine μαχαίρι(ον) which is the diminutive of μάχαιρα. So the word μαχαίρι is not _that_ old.


  Yes, of course, but the ancestor word is, so that this is not a relatively new loanword from another language - we do not have to look for the origins of the ready word μαχαίρι in other languages. Greece i definitely the starting point for the journey.


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## shawnee

Maybe not! From polishroots.com and concerning the name Majerowicz (essentially the same but with the son of suffix) In 1990 it was determined that 420 Poles bore this surname. If it belonged to a Jewish family it comes from the Hebrew Me'ir - light, illumination. If from a Christian family it is derived from the German Meir - steward of an estate or dairy farmer.


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## origumi

According to Wikipedia from Greek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language.


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## Ben Jamin

shawnee said:


> Maybe not! From polishroots.com and concerning the name Majerowicz (essentially the same but with the son of suffix) In 1990 it was determined that 420 Poles bore this surname. If it belonged to a Jewish family it comes from the Hebrew Me'ir - light, illumination. If from a Christian family it is derived from the German Meir - steward of an estate or dairy farmer.


 Meyer or Majer have nothing to do with majcher, sorry.


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## Ben Jamin

origumi said:


> According to Wikipedia from Greek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language.


 Well, my thread begins exactly with this information. I have never had any doubt about the origin since I learned the Greek word μαχαίρι some 20 years ago. I was interested HOW the word wandered from Greece to Poland.


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## shawnee

Bear in mind I'm not promoting any point of view here. I have simply been drawn into the topic. Just so that I'm clear, could you please quote the relevant passage, origumi and Ben jamin, from the wiki, because I'm not quite getting the point being alluded to.


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## Ben Jamin

shawnee said:


> Bear in mind I'm not promoting any point of view here. I have simply been drawn into the topic. Just so that I'm clear, could you please quote the relevant passage, origumi and Ben jamin, from the wiki, because I'm not quite getting the point being alluded to.


 Here you are:
Thieves' slang includes such words as _kimać_ (to sleep) or _majcher_ (knife) of Greek origin, considered then unknown to the outside world.


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## shawnee

I still didn't find that link. Never mind I'll take your word for it. The kimác addition is certainly convincing. I thought maybe you were referring to the not insignificant number of Poles resident in Greece during the past twenty years. I wonder if it is worth considering in addition to the gypsy linguistic migratory route, the emigres from Greece to Communist countries during the Civil war 1945 -47. They were exported to Hungary and other central European destinations to be saved from Capitalism. I've not heard of Poland as a destination but who knows!


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## Ben Jamin

shawnee said:


> I still didn't find that link. Never mind I'll take your word for it. The kimác addition is certainly convincing. I thought maybe you were referring to the not insignificant number of Poles resident in Greece during the past twenty years. I wonder if it is worth considering in addition to the gypsy linguistic migratory route, the emigres from Greece to Communist countries during the Civil war 1945 -47. They were exported to Hungary and other central European destinations to be saved from Capitalism. I've not heard of Poland as a destination but who knows!


 
The quotation pasted in is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language..
The majcher word is much older than the communist Greeks' immigration to Poland, at least 50 years older.
But I think that we can't solve the question by guessing, only information from people knowing Bulgarian, Romanian, Gypsy languages, Rusyn and Ukrainian could shed more light at it. I'll post that question on other fora.


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## robbie_SWE

Ben Jamin said:


> The quotation pasted in is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language..
> The majcher word is much older than the communist Greeks' immigration to Poland, at least 50 years older.
> But I think that we can't solve the question by guessing, only information from people knowing Bulgarian, Romanian, Gypsy languages, Rusyn and Ukrainian could shed more light at it. I'll post on other fora that questions.


 
Unfortunately Romanian can't help in this matter since the word (or anything remotely similar...well, besides *maier* from the German _Meier_) is absent in the language. So there must be another origin.
Good Luck! 

 robbie


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