Words and their origin. The origin of the words of the Russian language: interesting facts that you probably did not know

😉 Greetings to new and regular readers! Friends, the origin of words is a very interesting topic. We rarely think about the origin of the familiar words we use in conversation and writing. But they, like people, have their own history, their own destiny.

The Word can tell us about its parents, about its nationality and about its origin. Etymology is the science of language.

The word (or root) whose etymology needs to be established correlates with related words (or roots). A common generating root is revealed. As a result of the removal of layers of later historical changes, the original form and its meaning are established. I present to you several stories of the origin of words in Russian.

The origin of some words in Russian

Aviation

From Latin avis (bird). Borrowed from French - aviation (aviation) and aviateur (aviator). These words were coined in 1863 by famous Frenchmen: the great photographer Nedar and the novelist Lalandel, who flew in balloons.

Avral

A term common among sailors and port workers. From Dutch overal (get up! everyone up!). Now emergency work is called urgent hasty work on a ship (ship), performed by its entire team.

Scuba

It was borrowed from English. The first part is the Latin aqua - "water", and the second is the English lung - "light". The modern meaning of the word scuba is “an apparatus for breathing a person under water. It consists of cylinders with compressed air and a breathing apparatus.

Scuba gear was invented in 1943 by the famous French navigator and explorer J.I. Cousteau and E. Gagnan.

alley

In Russian, the word "alley" has been used since the beginning of the 18th century. From the French verb aller - "to go, walk." The word "alley" is used in the sense of "a road planted on both sides with trees and shrubs."

Pharmacy

The word is known in Russian already at the end of the 15th century. The Latin apotheka goes back to the original Greek - apotheka, formed from apotithemi - "I put aside, I hide." Greek - apotheka (warehouse, storage).

Asphalt

Greek - asphaltos (mountain resin, asphalt). In Russian, the word "asphalt" has been known since ancient times as the name of a mineral. And from the beginning of the XVI century. the word "asphalt" is found already with the meaning "building material".

Bank

Italian - banco (bench, moneychanger's counter), later "office", randomly from the Germanic languages ​​from bank ("bench").

Bankrupt

The primary source is the Old Italian combination bankca rotta, literally - “broken, broken bench” (counter, office). This is due to the fact that initially the offices of ruined bankers, declared bankrupt, were subjected to destruction.

Banquet

Italian - banketto (bench around the table). In Russian - from the 17th century. Now "banquet" means "a solemn dinner party or dinner."

Wardrobe

It is a borrowing from French, where garderob - from - "store" and robe - "dress". The word came to be used in two senses:

1. dress storage cabinet
2. Storage room for outerwear in public buildings

nonsense

At the end of the last century, the French physician Gali Mathieu treated his patients with jokes. He gained such popularity that he did not have time for all the visits. He sent his healing puns by mail. This is how the word “nonsense” arose, which at that time meant a healing joke, a pun.

Blinds

French - jalousie (envy, jealousy).

Conclusion

Origin of words: where did they come from, from what languages ​​of the world do words come into the Russian language? There are many such languages, but first of all, Greek and Latin should be mentioned.

From them borrowed a large number of terms, scientific and philosophical vocabulary. All this is not accidental. Greek and Latin are very ancient languages ​​of highly cultured peoples that have greatly influenced the culture of the whole world.

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When speaking our native language, we rarely think about how the words we use came about and how their meanings may have changed over time. Etymology is the name of the science of the history of vocabulary and the origin of words.

New words appear literally every day. Some do not linger in the language, while others remain. Words, like people, have their own history, their own destiny. They can have relatives, a rich pedigree, and, on the contrary, be complete orphans. A word can tell us about its nationality, about its parents, about its origin... So, another "portion" of words with a history of origin.

Money

If today, speaking the word "money", we first of all remember Western currencies, then money in Rus' definitely had Eastern roots. This word could have entered the Russian language in two different ways. From Iranian merchants and travelers, who then used silver coins called “tenge” (cf. Persian dāng “coin”), or from the Tatar-Mongols, who conquered the territory of present-day Russia a little later for a long time.

Moreover, the source of this root in the Turkic languages, which include the Mongol-Tatar dialect, could be three different things. Firstly, the supreme heavenly deity of the Turkic-Mongolian pantheon is Tengri. Secondly, the collection of money from trade transactions - tamga (originally "brand", "seal"). From there, by the way, our customs came out. And thirdly, the Turkic coin tängä, whose name, with the help of a suffix, was formed from the word “tän”, which means a squirrel. In this case, we can draw an analogy with the old Russian word "kuna" (marten), which was called 1/22 hryvnia. This reflects the functioning of furs in the role of money in the early stages of the development of society.

Young woman

It would seem that everything is very simple: the girl is from the virgin. But if you dig deeper, it turns out that the Proto-Slavic *děva originates in the Proto-Indo-European word *dhē(i̯), which means "to suck, feed with the help of the breast." In this, by the way, she is close to children (children), who come from the same root. From there, the old Russian verb "to reach" - "to breastfeed."

Boy

It's not so easy with guys either. This word, most likely, came from the Proto-Slavic *parę - a diminutive nickname from parobъkъ (here you can recall the Ukrainian lad), going back to "rob" (boy).

The original root here is *orbę, which also gave "child" and "slave", which developed from one of the meanings of the word "rob" - "orphan", since, according to some sources, it was originally the orphans who did the hardest work around the house.

Dinner

Russian words denoting meals have a fairly transparent logic of education. Breakfast came from the combination "in the morning", denoting a period of time - "during the morning."

Lunch was formed from the ancient prefix *ob- and the root *ed- and meant, in general, ... "to overeat." Indeed, according to the rules of normal nutrition in our latitudes, lunch should be the most abundant meal.

It may seem that dinner is when all things are ALREADY redone and you can start eating. Dahl hints at this in his dictionary, but still the word "dinner" comes from the old Russian "ug", that is, "south". And all because they sat down to supper when the sun moved from east to south.

Pillow

Scientists have been struggling with this word for several centuries. Dahl suggests that the pillow is what is placed UNDER THE EAR. Vasmer, Shansky and Chernykh are sure that this is something that is stuffed with something (down, feathers, cotton wool and even holofiber, be it wrong). There are also less serious, but more emotional versions of the origin of this word: 1) what they cry into when they need to pour their SOUL, and 2) what they choke

Fool

They say that fools in their most common meaning now were born thanks to Archpriest Avvakum. So in the 17th century, in his writings, he called rhetoricians, philosophers, logicians and other "advocates of demonic wisdom", comparing them with buffoons.

However, the root from which this word comes was already ready to take on the corresponding meaning. Philologists believe that the “fool” came from the Proto-Indo-European *dur (bite, sting) and at first meant “bitten”, “stung”, then transformed into “mad, crazy, sick” (from a bite) and only then turned into “bad, stupid." By the way, the ritual of initiation into buffoons also has something to do with this. According to one version, a jester candidate had to survive a viper's bite before starting his professional career.

Bee

Who would have thought that a bee and a bull are relatives. And if from the point of view of biology they are very far from each other, then philologically they are brother and sister.

The fact is that they come from the same Proto-Slavic root, which denoted the sound of a certain character. Hence, by the way, the outdated word "buzz" (buzz, buzz) and a bug. The bee itself in Old Russian was written like this - bechela, but after the fall of the reduced ones and the stunning of B in front of Ch, it acquired its current appearance.

How native Russian words arose

Have you ever wondered how many words from any phrase we utter belong to the language of which we are all speakers? And does the foreign always sound so obvious that it cuts the ear with its dissent? Let's talk about the origin of words in Russian as if we were getting to know them for the first time - and in fact, in fact, this is how it is.

Among archaeologists, it has long been accepted as an axiom that our Slavic ancestors, in the number of countless genera, covered the territory from the Pacific coast to the very north of Italy with the area of ​​\u200b\u200btheir settlement. Of course, there were no number of dialects of that time, but the foundation, no doubt, was laid not in the modern Cyrillic alphabet, but in the original Slavic - ancient Aryan writing.

The Old Church Slavonic language was never primitive, but it always reflected the essence, not indulging in eloquence. The use of words was reduced to twelve components of the full and free transmission of any information, feelings, sensations:

1. The name of the elements of the human (animal) body, internal organs, structural features: hump, liver, leg;
2. Temporal indicators, with units of time intervals: morning, week, year, spring;
3. Elemental and natural phenomena, various natural objects: snow, wind, waterfall;
4. Name of plants: tavern, sunflower, birch;
5. Fauna: bear, minnow, wolf;
6. Ancillary household items: an ax, a yoke, a bench;
7. Concepts invested in figurative thinking: life, decency, glory;
8. Verb concepts: know, save, lie;
9. Characterizing concepts: old, greedy, sick;
10. Words indicating the place and time: here, at a distance, side;
11. Prepositions: from, on, about;
12. Conjunctions: and, but, but.

In any language, be it Old Germanic or Vedic Slavic, the Word originally had an essence extracted from the image it created. That is, the original meaning of any word was created on the basis of known concepts:

• astra \u003d Ast (star) + Ra (sun god) \u003d Star of the sun god Ra;
• kara = Ka (spirit of death) + Ra = deceased divine principle (in man).

However, with the acquisition of new concepts, new images also came. As a rule, these images brought ready-made names with them.

For example, the word "cream" - "cr? me”- in this form, it came to us from France, and meant a lot of whipped cream with some kind of fruit syrup ... or shoe polish of a thick, homogeneous consistency.

Another borrowing condition implies a convenient substitution of a verbose concept for a one-word one.

Imagine the familiar and simple word "case", which came to us from the German language (Futteral) and is translated as "case with lining." In Slavic literal it would sound like "storage box". Of course, in this situation, the “case” is much more convenient and capacious to pronounce. The same goes for “glass” - “bocal” from French - a tall vessel for wine in the shape of a glass.

It is impossible to deny the influence of fashion trends on the preferred use of more euphonious words. After all, the “bartender” somehow sounds more solid than just the “bartender”, and the “piercing” procedure itself seems to be something different and more modern than the banal “piercing”.

But, much stronger than even the trend of foreignness, had on the original Russian its closest ancestor, the Church Slavonic language, which entered into everyday life in the 9th century, as an example of writing in Rus'. Echoes of it reach the ears of modern man, characterizing their affiliation with the following features:

• letter combinations: “le”, “la”, “re”, “ra” in a prefix or root, where in the current sound we pronounce: “here”, “olo”, “oro”. For example: head - head, before - before;
• the letter combination "zhd", later replaced by "zh". For example: alien - alien;
• the primary sound "u", then identified with "h": power - to be able;
• The first letter "e" is where we can use "o": once - once.

It is worth mentioning that the related Slavic languages ​​closest to us left a noticeable imprint in word mixing, often replacing the Old Russian originals: a pumpkin for a tavern, a shirt for a shirt.

In addition to the facts already mentioned, the 8th century, with its active trade and military movement, had a huge impact on the original Russian language. The first language reformers, therefore, turned out to be for the entire ancient Slavic people:

• Scandinavians (Swedes, Norwegians);
• Finns, Ugrians;
• Germans (Danes, Dutch);
• Turkic tribes (Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans);
• Greeks;
• Germans;
• Romans (as native speakers of Latin).

Interesting fact. The word "money", derived from "tenge", came to us from the Turkic language. More precisely, this is another alteration from one of the large Turkic tribes, the Khazars, where “tamga” meant a brand. Surprisingly, among the Arabs (“danek”), and among the Persians (“dangh”), and the Indians (“tanga”), and even the Greeks (“danaka”), this word clearly echoes in consonance. In Rus', since the founding of Moscow coinage, money has received the unenviable status of "polushki", that is? penny, which was equal to two hundredth of the ruble.

And here is an interesting fact about the origin of the word "sandwich". Many people know that the root of this double name (“Butter” - butter, and “Brot” - bread) originates in German, and, in writing, it was used only with the final “t”. However, few people know that the discoverer of the bread and butter known to us is the great astronomer N. Copernicus. He was the first to come up with a means to stop the terrible death of people due to the numerous diseases generated by the war between the Teutonic Order and his native Poland. The fact is that negligent peasants who supplied bread to the defenders of the Olsztyn fortress, because of their neglect of elementary cleanliness, brought such dirty bread that it was literally covered with a layer of litter. Copernicus, who took the plight of the warrior very closely, suggested making the dirt more visible by covering it with a light film of cow butter. This made it possible to better clean off the dirt (unfortunately, along with the oil).

Already after the death of a famous scientist, one German pharmacist Buttenadt, with all his might, seized on a valuable idea and made it so that in the not too distant future all European residents learned about the classic sandwich.

By the way, it is not difficult to recognize the words that came to us from distant countries by some model elements:

• from Greece - these are prefixes: “a”, “anti”, “arch”, “pan”;
• from Latin-speaking Rome - prefixes: "de", "counter", "trans", "ultra", "inter" and suffixes: "ism", "east", "or", "tor";
• also, the Greek and Latin languages ​​together gave the Slavs the initial sound "e". So, "selfish" is not our word;
• the sound “f” did not exist in the original Russian, and the letter itself, as a designation of sound, appeared much later than the words themselves came into use;
• the folk shapers of the rules of Russian phonetics would not even have thought to start a word with the sound “a”, so that every single “attack” and “angel” are of foreign origin;
• two- and three-vowel melodiousness disgusted Russian word formation. Consecutive vowels, no matter how many there are, immediately speak of the belonging of the word to foreign;
• the words of the Turkic dialect are easily recognizable: beard, quinoa, succession. They have a symbolic consonant alternation of vowels.

Foreign words are especially distinguished by their immutability in numbers and cases, as well as their “genderlessness”, as in the word “coffee”.

The most interesting stories of the origin of various words

In France, and indeed in all of Europe, there was no more luxurious atmosphere and freer life than at the court of Louis XV. The nobles and those especially close to the king seemed to be competing in who could most impress the spoiled ruler. Tables were served with pure gold or silver, masterpieces looked from the walls, from picture frames. No wonder that with such a radiant shell, its core - that is, the financial basis of the state, the treasury - was soon completely ruined.

Once, apparently thinking better of it, Louis acted really wisely. Of all those applying for the position of financial controller, he chose the most inconspicuous and young specialist, who did not acquire any fame for himself, except for a rare incorruptibility.

The new controller fully justified the confidence shown to him by the king, but at the same time earned himself such a bad reputation among the courtiers that the name of Etienne Silhouette soon became a household name for poor economy and rare stinginess. Most likely, it would not have reached our days if it were not for the newest direction of modernist art that appeared just at that time - a contrasting drawing in a two-color solution, where only the painted outlines of the object appeared against a minor background. The Parisian nobility, accustomed to bright, exaggerated colors, greeted the new artistic genre with contemptuous ridicule, and the unfortunate Silhouette itself, with its economy, became the personification of this trend.

Everyone, at least once in their life, has crashed in a devastating fiasco - whether on an exam, on a first date, or in a work environment. Synonyms for this word are only the sad concepts of failure, defeat, failure. And all this despite the fact that the “fiasco” is nothing more than a simple bottle, however, a large bottle, but this cannot be blamed on her.

This story happened in Italy, in the 19th century, with one very famous theatrical comic actor Bianconelli. The fact is that he greatly valued his role of the “unique” and always tried to impress the viewer, playing entire performances on stage, with the help of just one object. Each time these were different objects, and success invariably accompanied unprecedented improvisations, until, to his misfortune, Bianconelli did not choose an ordinary wine bottle as his assistant.

The scene began as usual, but as the game progressed, the actor realized with horror that the audience did not react to any of his jokes; even the gallery was silent. He tried to improvise, but again faced the icy hostility of the audience. Desperate to evoke even the least bit of emotion, the actor angrily threw the bottle on the stage and shouted: “Go to hell, fiasco!”

It is not surprising that after such a resounding defeat of Bianconelli's reputation, the whole world learned about the "fiasco".

Bohemia

Representatives of modern bohemia are always ambiguous and very popular personalities, since only a few get to the top of this pedestal. However, a little more than a century and a half ago, belonging to the elite was formed by other values, and all these writers, artists, poets lived in extreme wretchedness and in conditions of real poverty. Paris, having the misfortune of partially drowning in the slums, acquired the bulk of the free creative pariah in the Latin Quarter. There, in one of the oldest houses, under the very roof, in the attic, lived the friends of E. Pothier and A. Murger. Later, Pottier would become famous as the author of the famous "Internationale", but so far he was a poor and virtually unemployed friend of a struggling journalist. Murger tried to write an essay commissioned to him, one might say, about himself - about the inhabitants of the Latin Quarter in Paris. All city aristocrats very insultingly called the inhabitants of the quarter “gypsies”. This gave the name to the essay, published in March 1845: "Scenes from the life of a gypsy." Translated from refined French, "gypsy" is bohemia. So figure it out after that, whether to offend contemporary representatives of art, or is it better to say in Russian: creators, sculptors, actors, artists, architects?

The word that came to us from Greece (katergon) was not the name of a closed government building, but a rowing vessel with three rows of oars. Such vessels are known to modern man as galleys - this is a later name for hard labor. Three rows of oars required, respectively, three rows of rowers, and work on ships of this type was considered a punishment, it was so hard. Forming his famous fleet, in 1696, Tsar Peter I ordered to build as many penal servitudes as possible, based on their power and rude simplicity. At the same time, it was also decided to put criminals at the oars so as not to litter the prison with rabble and benefit from them. Of course, the criminal people were chained to their new instrument of punishment - the oar - with heavy shackle chains.

And this procedure was called the sentence to the eternal service of the rower - "exile to hard labor."

Students of Russian seminaries, who saw Latin among their first tormentors as an obligatory subject, considered it a completely unworthy subject. To study it, they undertook with a gnashing of teeth, often not understanding either the meaning of what they read, or a reasonable explanation for the expenditure of so much effort. The so-called gerund was especially difficult for the students - a certain basis of Latin writing, completely alien to Russian perception. The abundance of types and nuances of the use of this monstrous speech form brought the poor seminarians to the infirmary bed.

In retaliation, the somewhat distorted pronunciation of the word has become a household name for all sorts of meaningless nonsense - "nonsense"

To begin with, a bikini is not a swimsuit, Bikini is an island that is part of the Marshall Islands archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. And it is not known, in connection with what whim, the Frenchman Leu Réar wanted his piquant invention to bear just such a name - maybe because the island was small, and it was difficult to call the textile creation produced large. However, the fact remains that an unknown engineer, engaged in cutting and sewing in moments of rest, suddenly struck the world with an unprecedented and scandalous masterpiece. Divided into “top” and “bottom”, the swimsuit so stunned the public that a severe ban was immediately established on it. For wearing a bikini in a public place, punishment was due, as for immoral behavior and violation of the order.

However, the original product has found its connoisseur - among the stars of cinema. After only a few photographic and big screen appearances by the most famous women of the time, the public commuted the sentence and the bikini rapidly gained popularity.

Portuguese navigators, apparently, could not even imagine that, unloading boxes with fragrant citrus fruit in European ports, they endow this part of the land with a whole era of admiration for foreign delicacy. In the meantime, until the 16th century, Europeans, like the Russian people, did not even hear about a strange fruit. Wonderful Chinese apples - by analogy with the famous fruit, they began to be called that - quickly appreciated in taste and became a more noble and aristocratic substitute for ordinary apples.

And the Russians accepted the orange boom from Holland. And they also called them Chinese apples. And so it went, from the Dutch language - "appel" (apple), "sien" (Chinese). Appelsien.

There is an interesting but unconfirmed version that this word, with an undeservedly distorted meaning, comes from the name of the famous German doctor Christian Loder. Moreover, he was not distinguished by either laziness of character or some other offensive vice, but, on the contrary, he contributed to the opening of the first clinic of synthesized mineral waters in Russia. With a special recommendation to the patients of the hospital, the doctor pointed out the need for a quick walk for three hours. Of course, such an innovation could not but arouse ridicule among the uninitiated, who contemptuously say that again, around the hospital, the people are “chasing the loafer”.

However, there is another version of the origin of this word, and it is more supported by scientists. The fact is that "lodder" in German means "scoundrel, worthless person." So deal with them.

School has not always been a place of learning. Moreover, the very word "scole", translated from Greek, meant "time spent in idleness." In the 1st century BC e. in Greece they built similarities of small arenas, made up entirely of benches, built in a semicircle. These were places of public cultural recreation, where the Greeks, in the shade of trees, indulged in dreams and made appointments. However, these same tempting islands of peace, very much attracted the local luminaries of eloquence, exercising their oratorical skills in the circle of spectators. There were more and more listeners, but there was no peace at all. This prompted the Greeks to take decisive action to isolate pundits from the rest of the people. Thus, educational institutions were created, where speakers, as much as they liked, could strain their skills in front of each other and at the same time not violate public order. And scientists at home remained "chipped".

Tragedy

Few will be able to relate to the word "tragedy" in the usual sense, having learned that the true meaning of this word is ... "goat song." A song dedicated to the animal was sung, only in a parade procession, accompanied by dances and all sorts of wit. The supposed addressees of the hymns, who had to take all this mess at their own expense, were none other than the god Dionysius with his minions, the goat-footed Pans (Satyrs). Namely, in order to sing of their sharpness, prowess and cheerful disposition, a long, with many couplets, tragodia was invented. It is impossible not to pay tribute, the word has undergone many semantic changes before it came to us in the sense in which we understand it today.

Is it possible to imagine an eskimo in the form of a pie? But the American Christian Nelson called his invention exactly that, when, in 1920, the first popsicle saw the light. The history of the invention of the most delicious ice cream in the world began with the suffering written on the face of a little boy who, standing in front of a shop window, could not decide what he wanted more - ice cream or chocolate. Nelson wondered if both types of product could be successfully combined and, as a result of his experiments, the world learned about cold milk ice cream covered with a crispy chocolate crust. And this masterpiece was called: "Eskimo pie."

01.11.2019

Words with interesting origins

We don't often think about how the words we use came into being and how their meanings may have changed over time. Meanwhile, words are quite living beings. New words appear literally every day. Some do not linger in the language, while others remain.

Words, like people, have their own history, their own destiny. They can have relatives, a rich pedigree, and vice versa, be complete orphans. The Word can tell us about one's nationality, about one's parents, about one's origin. The study of the history of vocabulary and the origin of words is an interesting science - etymology.

Railway station

note

Hooligan

Orange

Until the 16th century, Europeans had no idea about oranges at all. Russians, even more so. We don't grow oranges! And then the Portuguese navigators brought these delicious orange balls from China.

And they began to trade with their neighbors. In Dutch, "apple" is appel, and "Chinese" is sien.

Doctor

note

The word doctor is originally Slavic and is derived from the word “vrati”, which means “to speak”, “to speak”. Interestingly, from the same word comes “lie”, which for our ancestors also meant “to speak”.

It turns out that in ancient times doctors lied? Yes, but this word initially did not contain a negative meaning.

Scammer

Ancient Rus' did not know the Turkic word "pocket", because money was then carried in special wallets - purses. From the word "purse" and produced "swindler" - a specialist in thefts from scrotums.

Restaurant

The word "restaurant" means "strengthening" in French. This name was given in the 18th century to one of the Parisian taverns by its visitors after the owner of the establishment, Boulanger, introduced nutritious meat broth to the number of dishes on offer.

Heaven

One version is that the Russian word "heaven" comes from "not, no" and "bes, demons" - literally a place free from evil/demons. However, another interpretation is probably closer to the truth. Most Slavic languages ​​have words similar to "sky", and they probably originated from the Latin word for "cloud" (nebula).

Slates

In the Soviet Union, a well-known manufacturer of rubber slippers was the Polymer plant in the city of Slantsy, Leningrad Region. Many buyers believed that the word “Slates” squeezed out on the soles was the name of the shoe. Further, the word entered the active vocabulary and became a synonym for the word "slippers".

nonsense

In the late 17th century, the French physician Gali Mathieu treated his patients with jokes. He gained such popularity that he did not keep up with all the visits and sent his healing puns by mail.

This is how the word “nonsense” arose, which at that time meant a healing joke, a pun.

The doctor immortalized his name, but at present this concept has a completely different meaning.

10 Russian words with an unusual origin

Railway station

The word comes from the name of the place "Vauxhall" - a small park and entertainment center near London. The Russian Tsar, who visited this place, fell in love with it - in particular, the railway.

Subsequently, he commissioned British engineers to build a small railway from St. Petersburg to his country residence.

note

One of the stations on this section of the railway was called "Vokzal", and this name later became the Russian word for any railway station.

Hooligan
The word bully is of English origin. According to one version, the surname Houlihan was once worn by a famous London brawler, who caused a lot of trouble for the residents of the city and the police. The surname has become a household name, and the word is international, characterizing a person who grossly violates public order.

Orange
Until the 16th century, Europeans had no idea about oranges at all. Russians, even more so.

We don't grow oranges! And then the Portuguese navigators brought these delicious orange balls from China. And they began to trade with their neighbors. In Dutch, "apple" is appel, and "Chinese" is sien.

Borrowed from the Dutch language, the word appelsien is a translation of the French phrase Pomme de Chine - "an apple from China."

Doctor
It is known that in the old days they were treated with various conspiracies and spells. The ancient healer said something like this to the patient: “Go away, illness, to the quicksands, to the dense forests ...” And he muttered various words over the ill.

Get to know the words and expressions that you use all your life!

If you have not missed the use of these words and expressions - this is nonsense, because only not frightened idiots, like us, could not know the most interesting history of their origin, which Maxim unearthed. The Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave - we will only say when you, like a bohemia, read and Share this article with your friends, after all we same not nerds!

So, it looks like it smells like kerosene ...
Here are 20 words and expressions with an interesting origin story:

1. Spat

This word, as well as the expression "Hey you, hat!", Has nothing to do with headdresses, soft-bodied intelligentsia and other standard images that arise in our heads with you. This word came into slang straight from Yiddish and is a distorted form of the German verb "schlafen" - "sleep." And the "hat", respectively, "sleepy, open." While you are here hat, your suitcase is drape.

2. Nonsense

Seminarians who studied Latin grammar had a serious score with it. Take, for example, the gerund - this respected member of the grammatical community, which simply does not exist in the Russian language. The gerund is a cross between a noun and a verb, and the use of this form in Latin requires knowledge of so many rules and conditions that often seminarians were carried straight from class to the infirmary with a cerebral fever. Instead, seminarians began to call "nonsense" any tedious, tedious and completely incomprehensible nonsense.

3. Not scared idiot

Most people who are inherently idiotic have the fortunate feature that they are pretty hard to scare (as well as persuade to use a spoon and zip up their pants). Painfully staunchly, they do not want to absorb any information from the outside. The expression went for a walk with the light hand of Ilf and Petrov, who in their "Notebooks" enriched the world with the aphorism "The land of fearless idiots. It's time to scare." At the same time, the writers simply parodied the title of Prishvin’s then very popular book “In the land of fearless birds” *.

*Note: "By the way, the word 'idiot' also has a delightful origin. Two and a half thousand years ago in Greece, citizens who did not engage in politics, did not belong to any party, but led a quiet peaceful life, were politely called “idiots” at public meetings. In general, as you can see, little has changed since then.

4. The Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave

For some reason, most people (even those who actually read Shakespeare) believe that these words belong to Othello strangling his Desdemona. In fact, Shakespeare's hero was anything but a cynic: he would rather hang himself than blurt out such tactlessness over the corpse of his beloved. This phrase is said by another theatrical moor - the hero of Schiller's play "The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa." That Moor helped the conspirators achieve power, and after the victory he realized that yesterday's comrades-in-arms did not care about him from the high Genoese bell tower.

5. Throw pearls in front of pigs

The process of throwing small glass debris in front of a pig is a truly ideal idea in its senselessness. But in the original text of the Bible, from where this phrase was scratched out, there is no talk of any beads. There is something about people who throw precious pearls into the feeder of pigs.

It's just that once the words "pearl", "beads" and "pearl" meant precisely pearls, its different varieties. It was only later that the industry got up to stamp penny glass balls and called them the beautiful word "beads".

6. With a twist

The image of a raisin - some small piquant detail that gives a sense of sharpness and unusualness - was given to us personally by Leo Tolstoy. It was he who first introduced the expression "a woman with a twist."

In his drama The Living Corpse, one character says to another: “My wife was an ideal woman ... But what can I say? There was no zest, - you know, is there a zest in kvass? - there was no game in our life.

7. The latest Chinese warning

If you were born before 1960, then you yourself perfectly remember the origin of this expression, because this is never forgotten. But subsequent generations were already deprived of the happiness of watching the confrontation between the United States and China at the turn of the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. When, in 1958, China, outraged that the US air force and navy were supporting Taiwan, issued its angry note, called the "Last Warning", the world shuddered in horror and held its breath in anticipation of a third world war. When, seven years later, China issued the 400th note under the same name, the world howled with delight. Since, apart from pieces of paper with threatening words, China had nothing to oppose to the States, Taiwan nevertheless retained its independence, which Beijing does not recognize to this day.

8. How to drink to give

It would not be very clear how the process of serving a drink is connected with the concepts “for sure” and “guaranteed”, if lists of criminal jargon of the 18th-19th centuries were not preserved, in which the expression “to give drink” is a synonym for the word “poison”. For poisoning is indeed one of the most reliable and safest ways for a killer to get rid of a disturbing person.

9. Not one iota

Iota is the letter of the Greek alphabet, denoting the sound [and]. It was depicted as a tiny dash, and quite often lazy scribes simply threw it out of the text, since even without iots it was always possible to understand what was being said. We don’t put an end to the “yo”, do we? The author of the phrase is Jesus Christ, who promised the Jews that the Law would not change “one iota”, that is, even the most insignificant changes would be excluded.

10. The case smells like kerosene

Yes, at first we also thought that these words were a common phrase from the lexicon of a fireman who, examining the charred ruins, puts forward a version of deliberate arson. So: nothing like that! The aphorism has a very specific author - the famous journalist Mikhail Koltsov, who published the feuilleton "Everything is in order" in Pravda in 1924. The feuilleton castigates the morals of American oil tycoons, handing out "kerosene-smelling" bribes back and forth.

11. Alive, smoking room!

The famous expression, about which everyone knows that it belongs to the poet Pushkin, actually does not belong to Pushkin.

This is a sentence from a once popular children's game. The children, standing in a circle, quickly passed each other a burning splinter and sang: “Alive, alive smoking room! The smoking room is still alive! The same unfortunate man, in whose hands the smoking room went out, was considered a loser and had to perform some stupid, and sometimes unsafe task - for example, pour snuff into the nightcap of the disgusting Amalia Yakovlevna.

12. Piano in the bushes

But this phrase is actually the author's. It was taken from the famous sketch by Gorin and Arkanov “Quite by accident”. In this skit, comedians depicted the principles of creating reports on Soviet television. “Let's go to the first random passerby. This is retired Seregin, a labor shock worker. In his free time he likes to play the piano. And just in the bushes, by chance, there is a piano on which Stepan Vasilyevich will play Oginsky's Polonaise for us.

13. Passion-muzzles

The word became popular thanks to Gorky, who called one of his stories that way. But Gorky, who was not distinguished by his ability for verbal refinements, did not come up with it himself, but stole it from an optimistic folk lullaby, which in its entirety sounds like this:

Passion-faces will come,
They will bring misfortune with them,
They will bring misfortune,
Break your heart into pieces!
Oh, trouble! Oh, trouble!
Where can we hide, where?

In general, if "Good night, kids!" decide to finally change their song intro, we have something to offer them.

14. Dance from the stove

And here we have a slightly sad, but instructive example of how almost nothing was left of a whole writer. Does the name of Vasily Sleptsov mean anything to you? Don't be upset, you're not the only one. Sleptsov today is known only to erudite specialists in Russian literature. He was simply unlucky: he was born and lived at the same time as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and other Turgenevs. So three words remained from Sleptsov in the memory of the people. In the novel The Good Man, the hero recalls how, as a child, he was tortured with dance lessons - they put him near the stove and forced him to walk at a dance step through the hall. And then he will chop, then he will turn his sock - and again they drive him to dance from the stove.

15. Filkin's diploma

Unlike Trishka with a caftan or Kuzka with his mysterious mother, Filka is a completely historical person. This is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Philip II of Moscow. He was a short-sighted man, who forgot that the most important duty of the Moscow pontiff is to diligently give to Caesar what is Caesar's, so he relied on his misfortune with the tsar-priest Ivan the Terrible. He took it into his head, you know, to expose the bloody atrocities of the tsarist regime - he began to write true stories about how many people the tsar tortured, tortured, burned and poisoned. The tsar called the Metropolitan’s writing “Filka’s letter”, swore that Filka was lying, and imprisoned Filka in a distant monastery, where the sent assassins killed the metropolitan almost immediately.

16. Silent glanders

Sapa is a term borrowed from French that denoted in the Russian army a mine, a bomb, as well as any explosive work. The quiet glanders were called digging under the walls of a besieged city or fortifications of an enemy camp. The sappers conducted such a dig unnoticed, usually at night, so that the subsequent loud boom would come as a complete surprise to the enemy.

17. Bohemia

Creative intelligentsia, beautiful life, glamor and other receptions - all this has nothing to do with bohemia. The real bohemia, which the Parisians had in mind when using this word, is the lack of housing and work, a bunch of children, a drunken wife hugging guests, no regime, rubbish, chaos, lawlessness and dirty nails everywhere. Because the word "bohemian" means "gypsy", and in Russian "bohemia" is perfectly accurately translated as "gypsy".

18. Cretin

Words sometimes jump from meaning to meaning, like lions on trainer's pedestals, and sit down in the most unexpected combinations. For example, there was a doctor in France named Chrétien, which means "Christian". Not that a frequent, but not too rare surname (we have a whole estate called peasants, that is, Christians). But it was this doctor who managed to formulate the diagnosis of “congenital thyroid insufficiency syndrome” for the first time. From now on, this disease began to be called by the name of the scientist "cretinism", and patients, respectively, nerds. That is, Christians.

19. Get bullied

Perhaps we will be in trouble because we have written such obscene language in our pious publication. Although, if you look, there is nothing indecent in the word "dick". This was the name of the letter “x” in the Church Slavonic alphabet, as well as any cross in the shape of the letter “x”. When unnecessary places in the text were crossed out with a cross, this was called "fuck". The old alphabet with all the basics and beeches was finally canceled at the beginning of the 20th century, and the word “dick”, having gone out of use, after half a century turned into a synonym for a short word with “x” (you know what). And at the same time, a common expression with a similar root - “to suffer garbage” began to seem obscene. Hernia in Latin means "hernia", and it was this diagnosis that good military doctors most often exposed to the children of wealthy philistines who did not want to serve in the army.

Every fifth city dweller conscript in Russia at the end of the 19th century regularly suffered from garbage (peasants, on the other hand, most often could not afford garbage, and they were shaved much more actively).

20. Places not so remote

In the Penal Code of 1845, places of exile were divided into "remote" and "not so remote". By "remote" was meant the Siberian provinces and further Sakhalin, by "not so remote" - Karelia, Vologda, Arkhangelsk regions and some other places located just a few days away from St. Petersburg.

P.S. Know who you are quoting

A. P. Chekhov

• The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea.
• It can't be, because it can never be.
• A plot worthy of Aivazovsky's brush.
• Sky in diamonds.
• To the grandfather's village.

V. I. Lenin

• Seriously and permanently.