Taking the risk of boring our Czech readers with information they already know about, we are going to tell you the meaning of the word “Škoda” in the language of the two Václavs, Laurin and Klement.
It’s common knowledge floating around the internet, but it’s interesting for those who did not know of it.
A tour of the online Czech-English dictionaries shows that Škoda, when starting with a capital means: “Too bad!,” whereas if you swap it out for a lower-case “š,” the meaning changes to “damage, harm, detriment and injury.” The first is a noun, the second is an interjection, like the famous German-derived gesundheit! that sometimes used in the US.
The name actually comes from founder Emil Škoda, who first branded the military equipment he built to help keep Austro-Hungarian empire together at the turn of the 19th century in this way, then merged with the bicycle works of the Laurin and Klement, in 1924, to pave the way for what the brand is today.
By Andrei Nedelea
Story References: Slovnik
PHOTO GALLERY
