On one etymological riddle: the dialectal word syrchatyi

The article is related to the problems of etymologization of dialectal words. We discuss different versions of the origin of the adjective syrchaty (сырчатый), noted by V. I. Dahl as doubtful in the meaning of ʻsquareʼ, with a few occurrences in seventeenth-century texts describing furnaces, and in regional records, mainly from the Perm region. The possibility of the presence of the suffix -at- or -chat- in the analyzed lexeme was taken into account, determining the accentological variant of the word and the suffix complication or uncomplication of the generating base (syrch-átyi or sýr-chatyi). Because of the area of ​​distribution of this dialectism, hypotheses of its Finno-Ugric (from Udmurt, Komi-Zyryan or Komi-Permian language), Turkic and proper Russian origin were considered. The conclusions are that 1) purely Russian origin of this word is the most probable; 2) presumably there were homographic lexemes sýrchatyi ‘square’ and syrchátyi ‘made of adobe brick’ (interpreted as ‘square’ in the “Dictionary of the Russian Language of the 11th–17th Centuries”), 3) the original semantics of the word syrchatyi ‘of the same shape as a device for making (squeezing) “cheese” (syr ʻcottage cheeseʼ)’ is probable, on the basis of which the meaning ‘quadrangular, with right angles’, ‘square, equilateral’ developed, and then a further shade of meaning — ‘quadrangular (rectangular, square) in shape at the base or in cross-section’.