Thus, ‘żona’ – wife – is probably the first neutral term for a woman in Polish. It was decided in the 15th century to deal with this linguistic ambiguity. ‘Mąż’ – husband – in its original meaning was ...

In Polish if you want to say that someone is a sucker, you can say that he or she is a deer. The word jeleń literally means ‘deer’ and can also mean ‘sucker’ in the language spoken on the Vistula.