About strong friendships they say: "You won't spill it with water." What this means, and also where the tradition came from, we will analyze today.
Origin of phraseologism
A long time ago, when there was no cable and satellite TV and, scary to think, the Internet, people did not have much entertainment. Therefore, young men in Russia did not know what to do with themselves, except for fights (of course, in their free time from work). Don't think that they spent all day doing nothing but waving their fists.
And, of course, not always young people could keep themselves within the limits. They had to be separated. Indefatigable fighters were doused with cold water. And if friendship passed such a test, then it was considered made for centuries. In the truest sense of the word, you can't spill water on your friends.
Modern meaning
Now the source of the expression is forgotten. Few know it, but the concept itself is alive and well in the language. So they say about those people who are inseparable. If a person has a comrade, familiar to him since childhood, then, probably, one can say about them: friends “you won’t spill water”. With each passing year, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain relationships with people, the river of their lifeblurs: everyday worries, affairs, and now close and not very close friends are already blowing away the flow of time.
"The Shawshank Redemption" and idioms
The iconic American film is connected to the topic of conversation thanks to our translators. Those people who watched the film remember well: when it became known that Andy Dufresne had escaped from prison, the director went on a rampage, was furious. The first person he invited to the empty cell by that time was Red, Andy's comrade-in-arms and friend. In one version of the translation into Russian, the head of the prison asks the prisoner: “I saw you together every now and then, you can’t spill water straight, did he say anything?”.
But Andy didn't even tell his closest friend about his plans - he wanted to protect him. The former bank manager did not want to expose the one he valued most.
Moral of phraseologism
The lesson that can be learned from a simple expression well known since childhood (sometimes it was written even in primers) is that friendship must be tested, so it becomes real.
If, for example, two people spend time together, chatting about this and that, but keep aloof from each other, in other words, there are some agreed (or implied) boundaries, then their relationship is not really a friendship but rather mutually beneficial cooperation. The purpose of such an enterprise is the "killing" of time. A modern person has so much free time that he does not know how to deal with it: whether to spend it on empty talk about nothing orspend hours on a social network, pointlessly flipping through the news feed.
Another thing is people who have gone through fire, water and copper pipes together. And my friend never let me down. Everything happens in life. Sometimes, for the sake of a friend, you have to stay awake or get up early in the morning in order to fly to his aid with all possible agility. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a lot for the sake of a person. Friendship is a 24/7 concept.
The quality of a person is checked not only by trouble, as the well-known phraseological unit says, but also by joy. If a person is truly disposed towards his brother with all possible warmth, then he will not only grieve with him, but also have fun. Touchiness is leaving human relationships, and now, unfortunately, you don’t even have to douse someone with ice water to check the level of affection, it’s enough to touch on personal interests.
But let's not be sad, life is too short. As long as there are people, as long as humanity is alive, it cannot be denied sincere feelings. There is a lot of bad, evil, cynical in the world, but it is necessary to understand: there is not only this, but also bright, good and eternal, and the expression “do not spill water” (phraseologism) reminds us of this.
