Studia Językoznawcze

An old expression, coming from the 16th century, podbijać komuś bębenka, ‘to flatter somebody’,which is analysed in the article, is now frequently used, but in some innovative formsboth at the formal and semantic levels. Such updates are favoured by the fact that the genesisof the expression is not widely known, and – as suggested by the analysis – its formal andsemantic consolidation in the memory of the speakers is rather weak. The expression is stillused, although in modified forms, because it is somehow attractive for the speakers. From theformal point of view there appear all possible transformations of its structure: lexical, grammaticaland collocative. From a semantic point of view the most clear are the updates with theoriginal meaning: ‘to flatter somebody’. The other options are less clear. It is possible to findcontexts, definitely less numerous, with the meaning: ‘to encourage somebody’, and – accord ing to the results of the research – both the positive and the negative connotations might appear:‘to encourage somebody to do something positive’, ‘to stimulate’ or ‘to encourage somebodyto do something negative’, ‘to egg on’. In addition, there are numerous quotations in which theexpression – formally innovative – becomes a carrier of new meanings: ‘to bid up’, ‘to heighten’,‘to play on somebody’s emotions’, and ‘to add fuel to something’. The occurrence of such meaningsresults from the fact that the old expression of unclear genesis for the present-day speakershas developed new semantic relations with other words and expressions, and because it associateswith non-linguistic phenomena: drumming, beating the drum.