figiel.

Etymology tree Latin vigiliaeder. Middle High German vigiljebor. Polish figiel Borrowed from Middle High German vigilje, from Latin vigiliae. First attested in 1522.. A shift of noisy night-time visits to houses and churches, vigils for the dead, combined with drinking, witchcraft, and sorcery > a wicked act, a magic trick, a ruse, a joke occured because of to the behavior of participants in such medieval customs condemned by the Church at the time. Doublet of wigilia (“eve”) and Wigilia (“Christmas Eve”). * Bańkowski prefers to see a back-formation from figlować, from Latin figulāre /figulus with a special medieval meaning to model figures from clay or wax for magical purposes with a semantic shift to to draw magical figures (signs). He also suggests 18th century authors reborrowed the term from Mikołaj Rej, who used it often in the 16th century, and very few others used it aside from him. * Brückner states that this term is derived from Latin figūra via the dialectal form figuły, refuted by most etymologists.