The paper deals with the lexical influence of German on older varieties of Slovak on the basis of the evidence given by the Historical dictionary of the Slovak language (HSSJ) in comparison to the one given by the language material in the card index used for its preparation. As a result, the article lists several instances, where the oldest evidence of dictionary entries does not correspond with the even older one found in the card index. This holds true not only for German loanwords, but sometimes also for autochthonous words and loanwords from other languages. Moreover, the dictionary entry for paštéta, paštéka ‘meat pie, pâté’ is missing at all, although the word is repeatedly confi rmed in older texts, even in the evidence given for other dictionary entries such as torta ‘cake’. Thus, the paper shows the necessity for counterchecking the oldest evidence given by the Historical dictionary of the Slovak language with the data in the card index used for its preparation, if one wants to play it safe.