wojsku

Wojsku is the dative and locative singular form of the Polish noun wojsk o, which means army or military forces. The noun wojsk o is neuter and commonly used to refer to the armed forces of a country in a general sense, or to the army as an institution. The form wojsku appears in the dative and locative cases, which governs its use after verbs and prepositions that require these cases.

In practice, wojsku is most often seen in locative constructions with the prepositions o (about) and w (in). For example, o wojsku means about the army, and w wojsku means in the army. The dative form also occurs in certain sentence structures where the army is the indirect object or beneficiary, though such uses are less frequent in contemporary speech.

Etymology and cognates: wojsku derives from the same root as the noun wojsk o, rooted in Proto-Slavic and related to words for war in other Slavic languages. Related terms include Russian vojsk o and Ukrainian viys’ko, all tracing back to a common Slavic root associated with military force.

Historical and modern usage: The term wojsk o has been used since medieval times to denote organized military forces. In modern Polish, the armed forces are more commonly referred to as Siły Zbrojne or Wojsko Polskie in official contexts. The phrase wojsku remains a grammatical form encountered in historical texts, formal writing, and everyday language when the army is mentioned in a dative or locative sense.

See also: armia, siły zbrojne, wojsko polskie.