On old Serbian metallurgical terms: bliznica

Abstract

Old Serbian bliznica is attested around 1350 in a passage dealing with iron melting. Since the mid-1600s the word has been recorded by early lexicographers, glossing it as ?steel?. Today bliznica and its shorter variant blizna are used in the same meaning by vernacular speakers of Eastern Serbia, Western Bulgaria and Macedonia, but formerly the word?s area extended far to the west, to Western Serbia, Bosnia and Dubrovnik. Although limited to a part of South Slavic, blizna, bliznica ?steel? is traditionally interpreted as an inherited word, going back to the PIE root *bhlei??- ?beat?, together with Lat. fl?gere, Latv. bli?zt id., Lith. blyz?? ?flaw in fabric?, Common Slavic *blizna / *blizno id., also ?scar, bruise?, *bliz? ?near, close?, etc. Such a derivation and generally a prehistoric origin of the word in question seem doubtful. More probably, it was borrowed from the tongue of the ?Saxons?, i.e. German mining experts who had come to Serbia in the 13th century. Presumably blizn-reflects a Middle High German compound with ?sen ?iron? as its head, preceded by bl? ?lead?, or perhaps by the verbal stem of bl?-en ?blow?. In the former case, a variety of iron would have been named *bl?-?sen > *bl?sen, most probably after its leaden colour, and in the latter the denomination *bl?-?sen might be interpreted as a calque of Latin flatum ferri, an iron mass produced by blowing bellows.