The author has investigated the remnants of the oldest layer of
indigenous Slavonic vocabulary in Serbo-Croat dialects on the base of
examples taken from three dictionaries, recently published by Stjep-ko Težak, containing material from Čakavian-kajkavian mixed dialects
(mostly from the region of Ozalj). The analysis of the lexical contents
of those dialects allows one to distinguish several words as relicts of
old Slavonic lexemes whose occurrence in the Serbo-Croat area has
not been known so far. The detailed examination of the Serbo-Croat
and Slavonic materials has brought about an essential contribution to
the knowledge of each separate lexeme which has been little investigated
(e. g. *gruca \u27clod\u27, *stbpb ’back\u27, *vegb \u27curved\u27) or even unnoticed
(e. g. *vfsiti \u27frown, ripple\u27).
The paper gives examples showing how certain old words have
preserved the relicts of their original, etymological sense. It also mentions
later semantic changes of archaic words as well as examples of
supersession of old Slavonic terms by new-coined words
