Biography of the word knowledge

To open in full a science is such a science - etymology hearing for the first time an unfamiliar word, everyone first of all wants to understand what it means. Responding to the constant desire of people to understand the words of their languages, linguists created a special branch of linguistics - lexicology, knowing the words as such. But now I found out what the word means. And I have another question: why does it mean that?

Why is such a thing called such a word, and not to any other? Why is the “cat” is a cat, and “whale” is a whale? It happened by chance or is there any significant reasons? In order not to leave these “why,” another department of linguistics - etymology. Many years ago, my son made a strong impression the word “vermicell” mentioned above. The son was small, but curious.

At first he found out for a long time: “And what is the vermicelli - an uncle or aunt? Then a new question arose: “Why did you think that she is vermichel? After all, she’s a similar origin to the noodles and etymology is in charge, and here I needed her help. In this case, large works did not have to be spent. Pouring the dictionaries of European languages, I quickly found that this word is absent in German there this product is referred to as a clumsy and purely German term “Fadenneln” - “threaded noodles”; But it is evident in French and Italian.

The French "vermisel" meant only Veremishel and nothing else. But the Italian “Vermicello” meant “noodles” only secondly. First of all, it meant a “worm”. To my wife’s extreme chagrin, but to the great joy of my son, it was found that the food “vermichel”, along with his name, which came to us from Italy, means “worms” not too appetizing, but very convincing.

Everything that I just told is a typical etymological case, only very simple. A deliberately foreign word is given; It is necessary to establish where it got into our language, which meant in its homeland and what adventures occurred on the way. It is much more complicated to the situation where it is not about the words-foreigners, but about the most relatives to us, domestic words.

At the first familiarization, they break up into two large categories; For some explanation, it is very simple to find an explanation: everyone is clear, let’s say that the “dining room” comes from the word “table” or “gobly” from the word “forest”. But try to guess “from what words the“ table ”and“ forest ”come from”, and you will soon see that it is extremely difficult to do it.

It may seem at first glance that the matter is still not so complicated: if two words are similar to each other in their sound or if they are very close in meaning, then, apparently, then they should be considered relatives. However, upon closer acquaintance, it turns out that this is far from always the case. The word "ear" a small ear is very reminiscent of the word "ears" a liquid ear, and there is exactly nothing common between them.

Everyone is sure that the children's word “Ladushki-Ladushka” is the same that “palms” is a diminutive shape from “palm”, but in fact there is nothing in common in the origin of these words: “Ladushki”-the modification of the very ancient Russian word “Lado”-“sweet, beloved”, while “palm”-“palm” comes from the same ancient “valley”; So our ancestors denoted the turned “Dole”, down, the side of the hand.

The words “palm” were not yet when, in distant antiquity, mothers played “Ladushki-Ladushka” with their children. Now the opposite: who will guess that such unlike words as “knot” and “monogram” are native brothers? To whom it comes to mind that the word "island" comes from the word "stream": island is a plot of land washed by jets of the river current! And if this comes to mind, who can prove such an assumption?

No one other than scientists-linguists, linguists-ethimologists. They are true trackers of words. They, as experts in heraldry in her coats of arms and pedigree, grow in the wilds of related languages, explore the history of the native language, compare among their words and those things that are designated with these words, and - often with great difficulty, after violent disputes - come to one or another decisions.

These solutions are not always final. There are stubborn words that do not lend themselves to any etymologization, stubbornly hide their relationship; So to speak, the words are undeniable tramps. There are such ancient elders among them, when they look, they are not their hands to interrogate them: as the world remembers itself, they always existed in the same meaning, moving from great-grandfathers to great-grandchildren, from people to the people and their roots go into the depths of centuries, to which we still do not know how to reach.

But still, no matter how stubborn these words without a genus without a tribe, human thought is even more stubborn. Every year, linguists reveal the secrets of new words, clarify old solutions. And now, one after another, more and more complete dictionaries, establishing the kinship of words, etymological dictionaries of all kinds of languages, our Russian in particular.

There is nothing more exciting, in my opinion, rather than the study of such dictionaries.However, this work is not available to everyone: it is necessary to imagine what the etymology itself is, on which laws it based its investigations, what strict rules are adhered to in order to monitor the arguments of specialists. It is necessary to be a linguist himself in order to judge the content of such dictionaries, reading them "from board to board, from crust to crust." The editors of “Science and Life” decided to give readers at least the very first idea of ​​etymology so that they could at least with one eye to look behind the doors of this very special part of linguistics.

I was offered to write a few shortest etymological essays for this purpose, and I got down to business. The work turned out to be more complicated than thought. You cannot cover with such essays a fairly large circle of words: there is not enough space for this. At the same time, it is impossible to show readers and in the entire volume the entire intricate apparatus of reasoning and evidence, using which scientists explore the origin of each individual word and whole categories of words at once.

Why is it impossible? For the simple reason that many of the arguments used, can only be evaluated and understood by a person who has already passed a fair linguistic training. Therefore, it remains to me just sprinkle in front of you, readers, a handful of different words-ordinary words of our language-and show how much it will be possible, how unexpected there are incidents and their distant or, conversely, the recent past, which are the bizarre relations between them, sometimes an unusually complex miracle, what an amazing mystery is sometimes our human word.

Each word of our language. Bull Bee - Brother where did the word "bull" come from? Linguists argue that the name is given to this animal "according to the moo published by them." It would seem that then he should be more likely to call the “mouse”, right? Maybe someday, if not in Russian, then in one of the languages, related to him, such a situation really took place?

Scientists carefully examined the “names” of the bull in the most diverse languages ​​of Europe and Asia. No, nowhere and never called him a "mouse." In Ukrainian, the bull is called “BIC”, the Bulgarian is “BIK”, in Czech, “BIK” is also “BIK”, for the Poles, as for us, the “bull”. But what is interesting: in the old Czech language, in the place of the modern “Bukati”, meaning “mumble”, there was another word, similar - “bikati”; It meant the same thing: “mumble”, “roar”.

The verb “Bukati” - “roar” - also has the Lithuanians who speak a language, a kind of Slavic, but detonating them further than they themselves are defended from each other. All this gives scientists the basis of scientists to say confidently that our bull really in ancient times was named after his voice: the “bull” originally meant “Revun”: he was “being”, and very menacingly.

It is curious whether in our modern language there are any other words of close origin, related to the word “bull”, not counting the derivatives from it, like “bull”, “bull”, etc. There are, but you will never guess what exactly. The most unexpected of them, perhaps, will seem to you the word "bee." But the language found a similarity between them. If you ask, what the hardworking insect is called by other Slavic languages, closely related to our Slavic languages, this is the picture: Russian - a bee of Art.

Once, when all the Slavs spoke in one more, general language, they probably called the bee "shoe". For them at that time, this word was clearly connected with the onomatopoeic verb “burying” - to buzz, make low, angry sounds, roar. But if this is so, then the circle closed: the “bull”, named in its “bugan”, and the bee, named after her “Buchani”, find themselves in a close property with each other.

And after searching, you can find another comrade to them-any “bug-waist”, beetle.

All these completely different “animals” are marked and described by the language on one common attribute: each is not their own way, they “boil”. The Bull Bear in language is, if not a native, then a cousin. The goldener is relatively easy to look for a solution for any etymological problem in cases where throughout the history of one or another word it changed naturally and logically, without interference and special incidents.

But what to do when, during bizarre trips of words from language to language and from century to century, completely inappropriate “embarrassment” took place with him? However, they did not happen to the word itself, of course, but with those people who, by ignorance or by excess of fantasy, adopting it from another people, begin to give it not the meaning that he had been listed so far.

And by mistake, in case of chance, the word begins to live with this new one, incorrectly attributed to him and this happens? Yes, it happens to grow everywhere in Europe and in our USSR a rather ordinary grass, blooming pink, sometimes whitish flowers, is not notable for anything special, but unknown why the squinting proud and meaningful name “golden -powered”.An amazing thing: a rather nondescript grass, almost weed - and suddenly such a sonorous name!

Perhaps, some folk traditions, legends, as with a fern are connected with this plant? No, we don’t know anything like this, so where does this promising “title” come from? It would probably be very difficult to guess; One special circumstance helped. In Germany, this field grass is also growing, and the Germans call it not quite easily translated by the name: “Tausendguldencraut”; This name consists of three words: “Tausend” - a thousand, “Gulden” - gold and “Kraut” - grass.

What a parable: again gold and thousands again! .. Obviously, this is not by chance! And right, this is not an accident. Let's try to turn to the Latin name of a strange plant. In Latin, his name "Centaurium". Apparently, in a handful simple grass, this one was considered “a hundred times gold” that’s the point that and no. The Romans borrowed their name from the neighbors and relatives-the Greeks, and the Greeks our golden-haired named the “centaurion”, that is, the “grass of centaurs”, the legendary half-loves of half-beams.

Neither "hundreds" nor "gold" occurred to them; “Gold” in their language is “chrysos”. These are the Romans, who knew the Greek language poorly, reinforced the meaning of the word, adapting it to their understanding simply by sound similarity.