Table of contents:
- What's wrong with the hats?
- Unbearable Latin
- The Idiot and the Educator - the legacy of Ancient Greece
- From feuilletons
Video: Why “teacher” is insulting, but “idiot” is not: The history of common words, the origin of which many do not even know
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
We understand perfectly well that the expression “the case smells like kerosene” does not actually mean an unpleasant smell, and “hat” is not always a mouthful, but not everyone knows where such “delights” come from in our language. It is all the more interesting to find out that in Ancient Greece one could take offense at the word “teacher”, but quite decent citizens were called “idiots”.
What's wrong with the hats?
We are talking about a lost case " slip up", a " hat"Sometimes called a soft-bodied person who misses promising opportunities. It is not entirely clear why this ordinary headdress suddenly became synonymous with openness and gaping, because there is nothing unusual about it. The hats are really not to blame for anything, these original meanings of the words were fixed in the Russian language by mistake, due to the similarity with the warped form of the German verb "schlafen" - "to sleep":. Despite the lapse in origin, the words stuck in the Russian language.
But about why "in the bag"if it has already been decided, linguists have no consensus. One plausible explanation links the hat to an ancient culture of bribery. In the old days, officials who dealt with cases took bribes in their hats, and the matter was, accordingly, almost settled:
(A. K. Tolstoy "People gathered at the command gate …")
Unbearable Latin
We do not even suspect that, naming non-essential things "Nonsense", in fact, we swear in Latin. "Gerundium" is a certain part of speech in Latin grammar, which has no analogues in Russian (a kind of impersonal form of the verb). Mastering the rules associated with this capricious form was so difficult that tortured students began to call everything incomprehensible and confusing as a gerund.
The Idiot and the Educator - the legacy of Ancient Greece
The ancient world is sometimes closer than we think. So, for example, the following two words came to us from a thousand years ago, having slightly changed, however, their meanings. Word "Educator" literally means "leading the child." In ancient times, this term was called a slave, whose duties included the upbringing of the offspring of noble families. This servant in infancy was involved in the initial training and protection of the child, and then accompanied him to school. The teachers usually selected such slaves who were not suitable for any other work, often disabled or sick, but faithful and devoted to the home.
And here "Idiots" in ancient Greece, citizens of the polis were called who were not involved in politics, did not belong to any party, but led a quiet, peaceful life. By the way, the expression "not frightened idiot" came to us from the notebook of Ilya Ilf. In his diary, you can find the following entry:. The writer humorously paraphrased the title of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin's book "In the Land of Unafraid Birds", dedicated to the description of the life of people and animals in the vastness of the harsh northern nature.
From feuilletons
Some common phrases, on the contrary, have existed for only a few decades, but we take it for granted. So, for example, when they say "It smells like kerosene", we understand perfectly well that we are not talking at all about spilling liquid fuel, especially since we already have no kerosene in our houses for a long time. The author of the expression is the famous journalist Mikhail Koltsov, who published in 1924 in the Pravda newspaper the feuilleton “Everything is all right”. The speech in that sharp and topical article was about the oil magnates and how the rotten American bourgeoisie distributes "kerosene-smelling" bribes. The expression has already survived a couple of eras and has become entrenched in our language.
Winged expression about "Piano in the bushes" appeared forty years later, in 1963. Arkady Arkanov and Grigory Gorin, composed a pop miniature "Quite by accident", where they parodied the clichés typical of Soviet television. A number of "accidents" are played out in the parody. The presenter meets with a pensioner who unexpectedly turns out to be a former production leader, and at the end, when the hero mentions that he loves to play music, the phrase sounds:.
Proverbs from time immemorial tell us why there are mushrooms with eyes in Ryazan, and what eggs hinder bad dancers
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