Poplatkem

Poplatek is a Czech noun meaning a fee, charge, or levy required for a service, processing, or privilege. It is used in business, public administration, and everyday language. Common contexts include fees for documents, memberships, or service provision, for example roční poplatek (annual fee) or poplatek za vyřízení žádosti (fee for processing the request).

Poplatkem is the instrumental singular form of poplatek. It appears in sentences where the noun is in the instrumental case, typically indicating the means or context of an action, or in fixed expressions with prepositions that require the instrumental. In everyday usage, many constructions rely on other cases or on prepositional phrases such as za poplatek (for a fee). The plural form is poplatky.

In Slovak and in related Slavic languages, there are cognates with similar meanings. The Slovak equivalent is poplatok, whose instrumental form is poplatkom. These forms and meanings are largely parallel to Czech usage, and appear in official documents, contracts, and consumer language.

Etymology: poplatek comes from the verb platit, meaning “to pay,” with a nominalizing suffix -ek, yielding a word that denotes a thing to be paid. The term has remained common in contemporary Czech for describing charges assessed for services or administrative actions.