What does “sklep mięsny” mean in Polish?

Pomnik dla bezdomnego kotka w sklepie mięsnym

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A2 Polish listening practice · Polish · Picked for people who know a little

💡 Did you know?
sklep mięsny
Polish shop-name pattern
“butcher’s shop” — literally “the meaty shop”; Polish names shops by adjective

Polish doesn’t have a separate word for “butcher’s”: it takes sklep (“shop”) and adds the adjective for what’s inside. Sklep mięsny is the meat shop, sklep spożywczy the grocery, sklep obuwniczy the shoe shop, sklep zoologiczny the pet shop. In everyday speech the sklep falls away and the adjective stands alone as a noun: idę do mięsnego, “I’m going to the butcher’s.”

The clip is a small tribute: a stray cat came to the sklep mięsny every morning to ask for a piece of meat, and when it died the shopkeeper put a little statue of it przed ladą z mięsem — “in front of the meat counter.” Lada is the counter itself, worth remembering for any Polish shop. The adjective pattern scales: warzywniak (greengrocer’s) and piekarnia (bakery) are stand-alone nouns, but as soon as a shop type gets specific — sklep rowerowy, sklep papierniczy — Polish reaches for sklep + adjective again.

From spng↗ on YouTube.Watch original

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this A2 Polish listening practice video?

87.3%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Polish words
Most of the words in this video are common Polish words.

How common in written Polish

76.2%
Top 1,000
87.3%
Top 2,000
93.7%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken Polish

78.6%
Top 1,000
100%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000
👄 Words for talking
This video uses words people often say in Polish.

Harder words in this video

These words are harder than A2. Here is what they mean.

figurkę
1×
Not in top 5,000
głodzie
1×
Not in top 5,000
ladą
1×
Not in top 5,000
ladzie
1×
Not in top 5,000
mięsny
1×
Not in top 5,000
meat (adjective)

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-PL 2014 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.

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