Obsolete words are a special group of words that, for one reason or another, are not used in modern speech. They are divided into two categories - historicisms and archaisms. Both of these groups are similar to each other, but still have several significant differences.
Historisms
These include words denoting special things, positions, phenomena that have ceased to exist in the modern world, but took place earlier. An example of such words is boyar, governor, petitioner, estate. They do not have synonyms in the modern language, and you can find out their meaning only from the explanatory dictionary. Basically, such obsolete words refer to the description of life, culture, economy, hierarchy, military and political relations of old.
So, for example, a petition is: 1) a bow with a forehead touching the ground; or 2) a written request. Stolnik - a courtier who is one degree below the boyar, usually serving at the boyar or royal table.
Most of all outdated historic words are found among names related to military subjects, as well as those related to economicitems and clothing: chain mail, visor, redoubt, pischal, valley, prosak, armyak, seed coat, camisole.
Here are some examples of sentences containing obsolete words. Petitioners came to the tsar and complained about the voivode, and said that they were taking away their estates, and then handing them out; the nobles, stewards and boyar children also complained that the voivodes were taking their palace villages. Cossacks with archers came to the tsar, carried petitions, asked for bread and money wages.
Archaisms
Obsolete words of the Russian language are divided into another large group - archaisms. They, in fact, are a subgroup of historicisms - they also include words that are out of use. But their main difference is that they can be replaced by synonyms, which are common and used today words. Here are examples of archaisms: cheeks, right hand, loins, verses, tight, ramen. Accordingly, their modern counterparts are cheeks, right arm, lower back, poetry, sadness, shoulders.
There are several basic differences between archaism and its synonym. They may differ:
a) lexical meaning (belly - life, guest - merchant);
b) grammatical design (at the ball - at the ball, perform - perform);
c) morphemic composition(fisherman - fisherman, friendship - friendship);
In order to correctly use archaism in a sentence and avoid confusion, use an explanatory dictionary or a dictionary of obsolete words.
And here are examples of sentences containing archaisms: In Moscow lived okolnichi, boyars, noble people, clerks, whom Bolotnikov threatened to turn into commoners or kill, and put nameless people in their place; industrialists and we althy also lived there merchants, yards, money, whose shops - everything was given to the poor.
In this passage, the following words are archaisms: commoner, yard (in the meaning of the economy), shop (commercial enterprise), nameless. It is easy to see that there are also historicisms here: okolnichiy, boyar.
Obsolete words perfectly convey the characteristic historicity, make the literary text colorful and bright. But for correct and appropriate use, you must always check with the explanatory dictionary so that flowery phrases do not eventually turn into nonsense.
