pozwalać

Alternative forms

• pozwolać (Middle Polish)

Etymology

From pozwolić +‎ -ać. First attested in the 16th century.^[1] Compare Kashubian pòzwôlac, and Silesian pozwŏlać.

Pronunciation

• Audio:

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• Rhymes: -alat͡ɕ
• Syllabification: po‧zwa‧lać

Verb

pozwalać impf (perfective pozwolić)

1. (intransitive) to allow (to give permission; to not obstruct) [with dative ‘whom’, along with na (+ accusative) ‘what’ or infinitive or żeby (+ infinitive or past-tense clause) ‘to do what’]

   Synonym: dawać

   Antonyms: zabronić, zakazać

2. (intransitive) to permit (to allow legally) [with dative ‘whom’, along with na (+ accusative) ‘what’ or infinitive ‘to do what’]

   Synonyms: dozwalać, zezwalać

3. (intransitive) to allow, to permit (to cause something to be possible) [with na (+ accusative) ‘what’; or with infinitive ‘to do what’]

   Synonym: umożliwiać

4. (reflexive with sobie) to allow oneself, to let oneself (to give permission to oneself to do something that might otherwise be considered inappropriate) [with infinitive ‘to do what’; or with na (+ accusative) ‘what’]
5. (reflexive with sobie) to allow oneself, to let oneself (to do something that one considers they ought to do) [with infinitive ‘to do what’]
6. (transitive, obsolete) to grant, to accord, to give [with accusative or genitive]

   Synonyms: udzielać, użyczać

Trivia

According to Słownik frekwencyjny polszczyzny współczesnej (1990), pozwalać is one of the most used words in Polish, appearing 25 times in scientific texts, 5 times in news, 23 times in essays, 9 times in fiction, and 11 times in plays, each out of a corpus of 100,000 words, totaling 73 times, making it the 886th most common word in a corpus of 500,000 words.^[2]

References

Further reading

• pozwalać in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• pozwalać sobie in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• pozwalać in Polish dictionaries at PWN
• “03.09.2020”, in Elektroniczny Słownik Języka Polskiego XVII i XVIII Wieku [Electronic Dictionary of the Polish Language of the XVII and XVIII Century], (Can we date this quote?)
• Paweł Kupiszewski (03.09.2020) “POZWALAĆ%20SIĘ”, in Elektroniczny Słownik Języka Polskiego XVII i XVIII Wieku [Electronic Dictionary of the Polish Language of the XVII and XVIII Century]
• Samuel Bogumił Linde (1807–1814) “pozwalać”, in Słownik języka polskiego
• Aleksander Zdanowicz (1861) “pozwalać”, in Słownik języka polskiego, Wilno 1861
• A. Kryński, W. Niedźwiedzki, editors (1908), “pozwalać”, in Słownik języka polskiego (in Polish), volume 4, Warsaw, page 921
• pozwalać in Narodowy Fotokorpus Języka Polskiego