Title
The book is today best known under its long-standing Hungarian title, "Szigeti veszedelem," literally "The Peril of Sziget." Zrínyi's original Latin title, however, was "Obsidionis Szigetianae," literally "The Siege of Sziget." This discrepancy is explained by the fact that 17th-century Hungarian had no distinct word for "siege:" (the paucity of contemporary Hungarian vocabulary is, in fact, lamented by Zrínyi in the epic's foreword) the modern-day "ostrom" ("siege") was taken from the German sturm at some later date, at which point "veszedelem" took on the exclusive meaning of "peril," thereby changing the apparent meaning of the title. The English translation was released as "The Siege of Sziget," from the original Latin rather than the later Hungarian.
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