What is common between a bride and a witch, a bull and a bee: How modern Russian words appeared

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Over the centuries of its existence, the Russian language has undergone tremendous changes in various fields: from the phonetic system to grammatical categories. Some phenomena and elements of the language disappeared without a trace (sounds, letters, vocative case, perfect tenses), others were transformed, and still others appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

Everyday words keep the secrets of the changes that have taken place in the language, and they also speak of the incredible wisdom and foresight of the ancestors, who knew how to notice the essence of things, give them extremely accurate, capacious nominations.

Among the most incredible, but historically related lexemes, there are those that in modern sounding completely diverged from each other, and those that sound similar, but their meaning has changed a lot.

Bull and bee

What can be in common between a huge ungulate grazing in the meadow and a small insect pollinating a flower? To a modern person, most likely, these living creatures will seem completely different, while the ancient Slavs thought differently.

Nouns were once formed from the common root for Slavic languages bykъ - onomatopoeia with the meaning “to moo”. The ancient word form for a buzzing insect was written by bchela. Due to the weak position, the ultra-short vowel ъ ceased to be pronounced, and the sound b was deafened to n. This is how the modern word bee appeared. The ancient people noticed the similarity of the sounds emitted by insects when flying with the bellowing of a bull, therefore they called it that.

Bride and witch

In addition to the fact that both nouns denote females, the words have another close connection - the origin from the Old Slavic verb vѣdati (“to know”). Only the lexeme bride arose as a negation (not + know), that is, “unknown, unknown”, and the witch - as a statement, “knowing”. The meaning put into the word “bride” is due to the custom of matchmaking, when parents or matchmakers agreed to conclude a marriage, often between a guy and a girl who did not know each other. Therefore, when the future wife was brought into the house, she was unknown to the groom. And a witch was called a witch who possessed magical knowledge.

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Palm and valley

There seems to be no obvious relationship between these nouns and their meanings. But it only seems! It is clear that the lexemes are similar, moreover, they are almost anagrammatic, you just have to swap the first and second syllables.

The history of occurrence proves that we have before us the same root words. As in the situation with the “bee,” the word palm in ancient times sounded somewhat different: dolon or hand. It was formed from the Proto-Slavic root doln with the meaning “bottom, dol”. The name of the body part literally translated “facing down to the valley”. Historically, the first two syllables were reversed, then, under the influence of the laws of reduction, the letter o changed into a. This is how the modern word form “palm” appeared.

The noun valley has retained its direct connection with its ancient root and meaning “lowland”.

In the language, there is still one word related to the aforementioned lexemes, “hem” (literally “creeping along the bottom”).

Benefit, benefit and not

Today's spelling and sounding of these words unites only a few letters - this is a remnant of the ancient root l'ga (“freedom, lightness”), common to all three words. Word forms were formed from one stem, but as a result, lexemes acquired different meanings from each other.

Benefit from the meaning of “freedom” passed to the concept of “relief”, then to the concept of “good” (liberation from something brings relief and becomes a good). The sound r as a result of the process of palatalization (softening) was transformed into z.

The privilege has exactly retained its original meaning of “exemption from encumbrances”.

It was impossible to develop along the following path: "not + freedom", that is, there is no possibility, which means "impossible, not allowed."

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Love and anyone

An amazing example of how, once related in origin and meaning, words in the process of language development diverged in their meanings, but retained consonance.

Both lexemes appeared from the Proto-Slavic ljubъ - to desire passionately, to experience love. Originally “any” (any) meant “sweet, lovable”. Then the concept of "the one that you like more" or "preferred" appeared, and in the end the meaning of "everyone" was established in the modern Russian language.

It is interesting that a relative of the lexeme love is the Latin "libido" (irrepressible desire), known to everyone living in the XX-XXI centuries, glorified by Freud.

Revealing the secrets hidden in everyday words, discovering their original meaning and pronunciation, a person evaluates the cultural heritage that the Russian language has accumulated in a new way, looks at the world around with a fresh look. And he sees the subtle interconnection of everything that exists, the one that our ancient forefathers may have possessed, and which modern people have lost, just as they lost the ability to pronounce the Old Slavonic sounds “yat”, “er”, “er”. A world in which “any” means “any”, a world in which everything is in constant living interaction.

Continuing the conversation about the intricacies of the Russian language, the story about what old Russian expressions we distorted, without knowing it.