Slovene dialectal hapax legomenon <i>mežek</i> ‘young bear’ and Slavic * <i>mečьkъ</i> ‘bear’

Abstract In the paper, the Slovenian dialect hapax legomenon məžә̏k ‘young bear’, which was only attested in a narrow area of the Gorenjsko dialect, is related and explained from South-Slavic * mečь̀kъ ‘bear’ (= Serbian dial. méːčak , Macedonian dial. mečòk ). The regularly expected phonetic development from * mečь̀kъ would be reflected as Slovenian * mečә̏k , therefore, the Gorenjsko məžә̏k belongs to those lexemes which have undergone non-systematic and sporadic phonetic changes. In the paper, it was not possible to give an unequivocal answer to the question of the etymology of the word family * mečь̀kъ : * mèčьka : * mečь̀cь with the starting point in the noun * mèka f ‘bear’, because * mèka could be a hypocoristic for * medu̯ě̋dь ‘bear’ or a deverbative from * me-ka-ti of onomatopoeic origin.