Here comes a brave team of athletes. Call them "youngsters"? The cadet taking the oath, is he a youngster or not? The prisoner patted the boy on the shoulder with a tattooed hand, a good fellow, they say. What did he mean? Why does the newspaper refer to rogue fans with a word that has the same root as mothers praising kids for good grades?
Let's deal with the word "youngster".
The ill-fated suffix
What is the difference between a thug and a thug?
The fact that the morpheme -chik was added to it. Linguistic theorists call it the suffix of subjective evaluation.
It forms:
- nouns;
- adjectives;
- adverbs.
Their task is to express the attitude of the speaker to:
- subject;
- sign;
- quality.
And this is done by giving expressive evaluation and shades:
- decrease;
- increase;
- caresses;
- irony;
- neglect;
- humiliation;
- contempt.
For example, a brother turns intobrother by adding a dismissive -ets, a sparrow becomes with an affectionate -eye sparrow and so on.
So the emotional coloring made a "young fellow" out of a "well done". This is a condescending connotation. And this word, when used correctly, is never a compliment.
Guilty for dressing up?
The word thug is sometimes used as a synonym for such words:
- dandy;
- petimeter;
- dandy;
- pshut;
- dude;
- fert;
- fat;
- show off.
What these definitions have in common is that they are called men (and regardless of age), who attach unnecessarily great importance to their appearance. But this is not what makes the word match in meaning.
The fact is that all these names have a negative connotation. Because those who are honored with them are distinguished by hiding the inner emptiness:
- posturing;
- swagger;
- cheeky;
- snobbery.
That's why they are called thugs in a meaning that has a familiar connotation. That is, their appearance and actions are so relaxed that they look impolite, violate generally accepted norms.
In a folk song, on a hair dryer and in a crime chronicle
So it turns out that they called it a "youngster" - it was practically scolded. Who is so "printed"? Suspicious types who seem somehow dangerous. Rogues and hooligans, according to others, capable of crime and ready tohim.
Another disapproving sound is taking on the word in the plural. Who hasn't heard the expression "outrageous or presumptuous thugs"? This means a crowd of someone's henchmen, ready to carry out any order of the leader. Naturally, this is not a compliment at all.
And to be called a youngster in thieves' jargon, it is enough intelligence and experience.
And yet, in the interpretation that dictionaries call folk-poetic, the "youngster" has a slightly different color: strong and brave, strongly built, daring, in a word. After all, it is sung: “A young man walks along the street, a daring one walks along a wide one.”
You can't throw words out of a song, as they say. But is it worth romanticizing external prowess, beauty and physical strength, unbalanced by internal virtues? This seems to be a personal choice of the evaluator.
