• Listen

  What it means

  Literally “to lay/place pressure,” this phrase means to emphasize, to stress, or to give particular weight to something. It is used when a speaker or writer wants to highlight that something is especially important or deserves extra attention. For example: “Profesor kładzie duży nacisk na wymowę” — “The professor places great emphasis on pronunciation.” The full construction is typically ‘kłaść nacisk na coś’ (to emphasize something).

  Vocabulary

  • kłaść — to lay, to place (imperfective)
  • nacisk — pressure, emphasis, stress
  • położyć — to lay, to place (perfective counterpart of kłaść)
  • na — on, onto (preposition + accusative when indicating direction)

  Grammar note

  The verb 'kłaść' is imperfective; its perfective partner is 'położyć.' The object 'nacisk' is masculine inanimate and takes the accusative case, which is identical to the nominative for inanimate masculines: 'kłaść nacisk' (accusative nacisk = nominative nacisk). The full phrase extends with 'na + accusative': 'kłaść nacisk na gramatykę' (to stress grammar).

  Cultural context

  This is a formal to neutral phrase, common in academic writing, teaching, journalism, and business. It is the standard Polish equivalent of English 'to emphasize,' 'to stress,' 'to put emphasis on,' or 'to underscore.' In very casual speech, Poles might say 'bardzo ważne jest…' instead, but 'kłaść nacisk' remains the preferred phrase in written and professional language.

  Intermediate

Noticed a typo, a wrong translation, or anything that doesn't look right? We'd love to fix it — just let us know via the contact page. Thank you!