The history of the word "work" is known to most native speakers of the Russian language very superficially. It is known that the word comes from "slave" - a forced laborer, which, of course, gives rise to many jokes about low wages, poor workers and that it would be nice to replace the thankless "work" with a more proud "labor" everywhere. Nevertheless, no one digs deeper, and it seems that this tip of the iceberg is enough for most. For those who are interested in the whole word-formation process, the full history of the word "work" from etymological dictionaries will be told in this article.
Slavic roots
The history of the origin of this word is inextricably linked with the common Slavic root "orb". In translation, it literally means the following: "helpless", "powerless", "weak". It is noteworthy that in addition to the above-mentioned "slave" and "work", the word "child" also came from this root - a helpless, weak creature. So "worker" and "child" are words in somesense related.
Early meaning of "work"
The history of the word "work" (which, by the way, used to be written through "o", not through "a") remembers the time several hundred years ago, when this term was understood as ungrateful, hard, forced labor. Slaves were literally called those who worked not of their own free will, but by someone else's coercion, because they were obliged to people with a higher position.
According to some sources, the history of the origin of the word "work" is closely connected with the period of existence in the Russian Empire of such a concept as "corvée". Work was literally considered synonymous with corvee - the days that a peasant worked on a foreign land without receiving payment for it, not counting the right to keep his own small farm.
Related words from other languages
It is noteworthy that the root "orb" almost never took root, except for the Russian language. Of the closest analogues, one can only single out the German word arbeit, meaning work. Its direct synonym - the word werk - comes from the Indo-European root werg. Interestingly, this variant took root better than the Slavic one - for example, the notorious English work.
"Work" is better than "work"?
This is a common misconception, probably due to the obviously negative connotation the word "slave" has. However, the word "work" is also not sorosy, noble and dignified.
The term "labor" has the Latin stem trudo, literally meaning coercion, not voluntary physical effort. In Dahl's explanatory dictionary, one of the meanings of the word "labor" is "suffering", "oppression". This negative connotation is reflected in the phrases "hard work", "hard work" and the like, literally meaning work for which you have to make an effort, that is, to suffer.
Replacing "work" with "work" is a personal matter for everyone. If we talk about the history of the words "work" and "labor", both of them are not too optimistic, since they capaciously reflect the difficult past of the people and the state.
Alternative options
An ideal variant of a "positive" substitution would be a word derived from the Latin root labor - "effort", "labor" (in the modern, not historical sense). However, this word migrated to the Russian language only within the framework of the words "laboratory" and "laboratory assistant", which do not fit in with the life of an ordinary worker.
The variant "employee" also sounds ignoble, since it comes from the word "serve", "serve", that is, to be subordinate to someone, in fact - to be someone's slave.
Don't get upset about this. Russian language - notthe only one in which the history of the word "work" carries a negative connotation. Take, for example, the French word travail, derived from the Latin tripalium - "three sticks", that is, a weapon consisting of three spears. In the Middle Ages, it was used to torture people.
