Depreciative plural (te chłopy)

The depreciative plural

In Polish, grammar itself can be used as an insult. When you want to express frustration, contempt, or a lack of respect toward a group of men (or a mixed-gender group), you can use the depreciative plural (formy deprecjatywne).

Normally, masculine personal nouns require virile (masculine personal) agreements. To show disrespect, you deliberately "downgrade" these men to the non-virile gender—the grammatical category usually reserved for objects, animals, and feminine nouns.

How to downgrade a noun

To apply the depreciative plural, you must change every part of the sentence that agrees with the noun:

• The noun: It often takes a non-virile ending, usually -y or -e. For example, chłopi (guys/peasants) becomes chłopy.
• Demonstratives and adjectives: Use te instead of ci, and non-virile adjective endings like -e instead of -y or -i (e.g., te leniwe instead of ci leniwi).
• Past tense verbs: Verbs take the non-virile -ły ending instead of the virile -li ending (e.g., mogły instead of mogli).

Complaining about workers

This grammatical tool is most famously used to complain about incompetent workers, botched repairs, and terrible services. Respectable titles or neutral professions get twisted into depreciative forms, such as majstry (instead of majstrowie or majstrzy) and fachowce (instead of fachowcy).

Emphasizing incompetence

Even highly educated professionals aren't safe from the depreciative plural. Inżynierowie (engineers) can be rapidly downgraded to inżyniery when they make a mistake.

If a word is already an insult, like partacz (bungler or botcher), its plural noun form (partacze) looks exactly the same in both the standard and depreciative forms. However, pairing it with the non-virile demonstrative te and a non-virile verb like wieszały clearly marks your contempt.