Terms (Precise Use vs. Colloquial Use) – the Word Tiret and Related Words

Abstract

DOI: http://doi.org/10.26333/sts.xxviii.16

The point of departure for this discussion is the word tiret in Polish. Borrowed from French, this term has recently gained considerable frequency in Polish. This is the result of its introduction into the “Principles of Legislative Technique”, accepted by the Polish authorities: tiret is therefore a given compositional unit of a legislative act (in the sequence: article, paragraph, letter, tiret). All the occurrences of the word tiret in the Polish National Corpus illustrate this meaning (which does not exist in French). Earlier, the word tiret was used in Polish in the sense taken from French, Polish dictionaries define it with the synonym, łącznik (‘hyphen’), which does not correspond to the meaning of the French word in French orthographic rules, where tiret is ‘dash’ (in Polish: myślnik or pauza), and where hyphen is named regularly as trait d’union. However, in the French typographic terminology the word tiret has a wider sense: it denotes all horizontal lines, used in print: therefore there have been three types of tiret distinguished: court, moyen and long, which correspond respectively to: em-dash, en-dash and hyphen (in Polish: łącznik, półpauza and pauza): these are technical terms, used by specialists in typesetting. In practice em-dashes and en-dashes are terms distinguished by professionals, while hyphens (short) and dashes (relatively long) are often mistaken in writing, similarly confused are (used informally) respective terms – in various languages.