The article deals with the Czech lexeme zvíci, which is quite frequently used in contemporary Czech. This type of compound was created in the 14th century; the compound consists of the erstwhile preposition vz- and the noun viecě. The article discusses the formal and semantic changes and the usage of the lexeme zvíci (and similar words) from the Middle Ages to the present time. Many attestations from a synchronic and also diachronic corpus of the Czech language are included.
Disease in its general is in contemporary Czech most frequently denoted by lexemes nemoc, neduh, and choroba (illness). Nemoc and neduh have been part of the Czech lexis since the earliest periods; the expression choroba has its origins in the National Revival era. In Old Czech, the third most frequented lexeme is nedostatek. The material base for Old Czech lexemes analysis comes from the Old Czech text database (Old Czech Corpus) accessible in the Vokabulář webový application (http://vokabular.ujc. cas.cz). Special attention is paid to collocations of these lexemes, terminological (medical) collocations in particular, or to expressions with a potential to enter into this type of collocations. The most frequent collocation patterns are N + Adj; N + preposition v (in), na (on), po (on) + Nloc; N + Ngen and N + ot (caused by) + Ngen. The lexeme present in the greatest number of syntactic patterns is nemoc, then comes neduh, and finally nedostatek with the smallest collocational potential. Collocation categories are distinguished above all by denoting the ailing body part (e.g. head: nemoc hlavní, nemoc v hlavě, nemoc hlavy). Another category involves denotation of the disease origins (e.g. heat), following the N + Adj (nemoc horká) or N + Ngen with a preposition (nemoc ot horkosti). The analysis confirms that the expression nemoc, referring to non-health in general, is within both Old and Modern Czech lexis the one most firmly embedded.