Cossack tabor, water plane and tasteless present: How words in Russian changed their meaning

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

Over the past 200-300 years, not only the way of speaking in Russian has changed, but also the meanings of many words. If a contemporary falls into the time of Catherine the Great, and no matter how he follows his speech so that “virtuality” and “smoothies” do not slip through there, they will still not understand him the way they would like. Generations of the twenty-first century generally have to interpret a lot in the books of the twentieth, which seem modern and understandable to adults.

For example, the word "card". For an inhabitant of the twenty-first century, this is either a subway map, or a bank card, or a piece of cardboard that the referee shows to the players. But you can't substitute any of these meanings when you read how a boy “lost his cards” - that is, food coupons, or how a girl presents her card to a soldier as a keepsake - that is, a printed photograph.

“Train” seems like a modern word to many, because, of course, there were no railways in the eighteenth century. But the word was still used, and not everyone immediately guesses what it means - "From Moscow to St. Petersburg the train set off along the sled track", if the heroes of the book wear wigs and glue flies on their faces. This means that several crews, or rather, in this context, sledges went together somewhere, stretched out in a chain, one after the other. And about Lomonosov was once told not only that he came to study with a wagon train, but also with a train - after all, these are practically synonyms.

Many are convinced that "tabor" is a Gypsy word, but it exists only in the dialects of the Gypsies living among the Slavs. The answer is simple: initially this word, which came into the Slavic languages from the Turkic, did not mean either a gypsy village or a noisy crowd. This was the name of the camp of a military or, less often, a trade caravan, when people got up all together to rest and at the same time closed their camp with carts, like a wall. For example, Cossacks became tabors.

Our ancestors, at least in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, calmly used screens, although they did not know either television or computers. The French word "screen", which entered the Russian language, originally meant something like a screen or shield - protection from prying eyes or distant influence.

The word "boor" in Russian has always been used as a curse, but at first it did not mean anyone who makes inappropriate remarks, climbs out of line, says rude and nasty things. In the days of serfdom, “boor” was synonymous with the word “muzhik”, and, by the way, to call a man of noble rank “muzhik” meant not to praise him, but to insult him. Both "boor" and "man" are a peasant, a commoner.

Now only an insect with large wings, often very beautiful, is called a "butterfly". But even a hundred years ago, during the Civil War, one could hear the word "butterflies" as an affectionate designation for women, that is, "women". Now another affectionate form is used - "babonki".

Under Catherine the Great, and earlier, the word "thief" was more likely to denote a state traitor, as well as all sorts of swindlers on trust. The thieves were called tats or kidnappers.

Children are perplexed when they read in an old fairy tale that some illiterate girl from the past, who does not even go to school, is given a lesson and it is connected either with yarn or with some kind of work at home. And the word "lesson" as a synonym for absolutely any assignment, not just home school assignment, was very popular a hundred years ago. School activities, which have a beginning and an end, began to be called lessons in the twentieth century.

Another word that constantly amazes modern children is "tablet", which can often be seen in stories about the Great Patriotic War and not only. For them, a tablet is a very specific kind of computer, and since there were no computers before, there could not be tablets. However, this French word literally translates as "tablet" and means a flat and rigid small bag in which it is convenient to carry papers so as not to wrinkle, and on which, like on a stand, you can write if there is no table.

It's the same with the "package". For most Russians in the twenty-first century, this is a plastic bag. However, in Pushkin's time - and for much of the twentieth century - the word meant a tightly packed postal item. Actually, it comes from the verb "to pack" in the native French, from where it came to Russian. The very word denoting the packaging process, the French, in turn, took from English.

Until the thirties of the twentieth century, the word "while" no one said goodbye, it was used only as a union or particle. It became a farewell after the reduction of the phrases "bye (what) bye" and "bye (what) all the best", expressing the hope that the separation is temporary.

The word "airplane" existed long before the invention of flying machines, and not only in the fairy tale about the magic carpet. Aircraft were called hastily made for the ferry, which moved without the efforts of the ferryman, due to the fact that they were blown away by the current, and a kind of hand loom. Even when aviation was invented, flying machines were not airplanes for a long time - they were called airplanes.

Long before the discovery of electricity and the invention of wires, the word "current" existed, meaning the movement of water. The name "Gostinets" was not a treat, but a trade route, a high road. The word "ordeal" also changed its meaning. Now it has become synonymous with torture, and earlier, when pronounced with an emphasis on "a", meant the collection of taxes.

Words in the history of the Russian language not only changed their meaning, but were also replaced by foreign ones. Baton, student, manager: How, when and why the Russian language changed and absorbed foreign words.