Linguists and literary critics associate the Russian language with a real living organism, in which various changes are constantly taking place. The vocabulary of the language is constantly changing, for almost ten centuries of its existence, forgotten words appeared in it, which at a certain period of its life played an important role for our ancestors.
The emergence of new words and the “extinction” of old ones is a very important process for linguistics. It is thanks to him that linguists can restore not only the picture of the world that was relevant at a certain point in time, but also trace ancient language processes, traces of which are also present in modern Russian (the fall of the reduced, palatalization, etc.).
Why do words disappear from the language?
The history of rare and forgotten words is closely related to lexicology - a branch of linguistics. It is this section that studies the meanings of words and their relationship with each other. The main reason for the disappearance of words from the language is changes in the life of its speakers, which are associated with everyday life, customs, as well as scientific and technicalprogress. For example, the word “konka”, which previously denoted one of the first types of tram, has left the modern lexicon. This happened partly because now such a phenomenon does not exist, it was replaced by the electric tram familiar to us.
Earlier, caftans were worn in Russia, but now they are no longer worn, preferring more comfortable and popular clothes, so the word denoting this outfit has gone out of use. The less often words are used, the faster they fade into the background and disappear. As a rule, words do not disappear from the language at once, but are preserved as obsolete (archaisms) and historicisms.
Archaisms
Some forgotten words have analogues in modern Russian, they are called archaisms. For example, the outdated word “hope” corresponds to the more relevant today “hope”. “To hope” in this case acts as an archaism and can be used in prose or poetic texts to give them solemnity and appropriate style.
In some languages, archaisms can play the role of jargon, then they are used to compose legal and religious texts. The language necessarily retains traces of the existence of archaisms, for example, derivatives from them. For example, the familiar word "now" was formed from the obsolete word "this", which had the meaning of "this".
Classification of archaisms
These undeservedly forgotten words fall into three broad categories. The first of them -lexico-phonetic archaisms. They are understood as such words in which there is a sound that does not correspond to modern pronunciation. For example, earlier, instead of the word “project”, which is familiar to us, it was customary to use the word “project”. This word was previously borrowed from English, where it is still pronounced as "project". As it adapted to the Russian language, the sound "zh" disappeared from the word, and since then it has not changed any more.
Another category of archaisms - lexical and derivational. They always have a derivational morpheme (suffix or prefix), which distinguishes these words from modern ones. For example, instead of the modern word “restaurant”, the corresponding unit was previously used - “restaurant”. The third category is actually lexical archaisms, these include words that are completely outdated: abyss, shelter, etc.
Historisms
When analyzing forgotten words, one should remember about the existence of historicisms - words that are completely out of use and are not included in the active vocabulary of the Russian language. They are opposite to archaisms and do not have any analogues in the current language. Historicisms can include words that have fallen out of use both several centuries ago and several years.
As examples of historicisms, one can cite such words as “boyar” and “nepman”. At first glance, it may seem that these words are actively used in the modern language, but in fact they can only be found in texts describing historical realities. In all other casesthe use of such words in Russian can be considered as non-normative.
Where can I find lost words?
Words that previously functioned in the Russian language, but were still lost, can be found in explanatory dictionaries that began to be created at the end of the 18th century. The undeservedly forgotten Russian words from Dahl's dictionary are a vivid example of this. The dictionary of the Great Russian language has three editions, which were published in 1866, 1882 and 1909. The author of the dictionary, writer Vladimir Ivanovich Dal, created the first edition for 53 years, and he did it with a kind of indifference towards linguistics.
Thanks to this approach of the author, Dahl's dictionary tells more about folk beliefs, folklore and life than about the features of the language. In this historical document, you can find a large number of names of sails, as well as detailed information about their purpose. Thanks to the works of Dahl, a huge number of dialect words have come down to our time, which, unfortunately, are no longer found in modern Russian.
Examples of missing words from Dahl's dictionary
If you start compiling a list of rare and forgotten words of the Russian language on your own, then 70-80% of them will be taken from Dahl's dictionary. For example, the word “amanat” was actively used in the 17th-18th centuries and was deciphered as “a person taken hostage” or “a person taken as a security for something”. The last mentions of this word are found in the literature describing the beginning of the 20th century, but by the end of the 1990syears, it completely left the Russian language.
If you continue to look for undeservedly forgotten words, then you will definitely catch the eye of the “steelyard”. It was they who previously designated hand scales, which had a specific lever and a movable reference point. The second meaning of this word is a measure of weight, which at that time was almost 2.5 pounds (a little over a kilogram). Now this word is not used in speech everywhere, it can be found only in historical literature. You can find a lot of similar words in the dictionary, this is often used by writers who prefer to use them in their work as a kind of "zest".
Somov Dictionary
Forgotten words of the Russian language can also be found in the special edition of V. P. Somov, published in 2000. The publication aims to help those who are fond of reading the classic works of Russian writers created in the 18th-19th centuries. This dictionary includes not only historicisms and archaisms, but also professional, terminological and dialect vocabulary, with which you can understand the uniqueness of the life of Russian people who lived in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
According to linguists and lexicographers, this dictionary fully reflects almost all now forgotten Russian words. The second edition of the book was published in 2008, the number of dictionary entries in it has been significantly increased, and active work is underway on the third version of the dictionary. According to the author, the publication does not claim to be a linguistic work aimed at the study of linguisticunits, but is a work that allows you to get a picture of the world of past years.
Examples
In Somov's dictionary one can find such archaisms as “custodiy”, “shibai”, “amorous”, etc. And if the word “custodian”, which in ancient times was called a watchman, left the Russian language, then “amorous” is still found in it, but mainly in oral speech. In the literature, if this word occurs, it is only to make the text a certain obsolescence or sublimity.
A distinctive feature of the dictionary is that it contains words that by the beginning of the 21st century have radically changed their lexical meaning. For example, the word "selfish" in the works of Mikhail Evgrafovich S altykov-Shchedrin means a small carriage that can be used by only one rider. In modern Russian, this word has a completely different meaning.
How do they learn obsolete vocabulary?
In school education, such vocabulary is studied quite extensively throughout all eleven years. Modern teaching methods imply that students themselves study undeservedly forgotten words, the list of which they compile for classes, using dictionaries and relevant literature. Drawing parallels between obsolete words and modern ones, students themselves form a list of those words that were forgotten in vain.
More vocabulary can be studied at the Faculty of Philology. Here is the vocabulary of the Russian languagestudied systematically - vocabulary is taught in parallel with the Old Slavonic and Old Russian languages. As a result, it is possible to achieve an understanding of how historical processes influenced the change of words and the formation of the modern Russian language.
Conclusion
Forgotten words are present in every language, and most often they appear due to the fact that the subject they represent is out of everyday use. The vocabulary of the language, meanwhile, is not at all poorer, since neologisms are replacing obsolete words - new language units created to designate new objects that have entered everyday life. Neologisms have their own appearance algorithms, which are being studied by scientists.
At the same time, situations are not uncommon when a word that has existed in the language for a long time acquires a completely new meaning, and this phenomenon can also be attributed to neologisms. However, scientists still disagree on whether such a word should be unambiguously called neologism or not. In addition, it is very important here to track the time when a new meaning appeared for a particular word, since neologisms after a certain time become regular units of the language. This is exactly what linguists who study the lexical composition of the word and language do. Periodically, amendments and additional comments to existing dictionaries are published from under their pen, aimed at updating them.
