Meaning:
Lit. “To drive down with handbrake on”. This is one of Polish language’s most colourful metaphors for male masturbation (more to follow on this blog).
Category: Driving
Był bity
Meaning:
Lit. “it has been beaten”. This terse statement means that a car in question has been in a serious accident before and is probably worth much less then expected. The sentence is sometimes provided in an ad description by frank Poles selling secondhand cars coming from western Europe.
Dzwon
Meaning:
Lit. “a bell”. The word has a sinister undertone for every driver as it is used to denote a head-on collision that leaves two vehicles beyond repair and lives threatened. The origin can no doubt be found in the sound two crashing cars make.
Szerokości!
Meaning:
The literal translation would be “broadness!” or “wideness!” which obviously does not make much sense in English. “Szerokości!” is a contracted form of the traditional wishes directed at somebody leaving to drive a long way: “szerokiej drogi!” which means: “may the road be wide (for you)” and might have something to do with Polish roads being in general of a low quality and dangerous. The shortened version created probably in the early 90s still sounds very slangy and far from official language. It is primarily used among truck drivers, less often by motorcycle and car enthusiasts to stress the emphasize that they are a club of their own.
Dawca
Meaning:
Lit. “a donor”. The word itself is most of the time used in expressions related to medicine: “dawca krwi” or “krwiodawca” means a blood donor and “dawca szpiku kostnego” – a bone marrow donor.
So much for the official Polish. But in drivers’ slang this term is only used for motorcyclists, whose sole reason to live is to overtake everyone else on the road, and set new records of accelerating and braking between tight turns. You can find the origin of it in what happens after an unlucky biker hits a car head-on.