This is a unique case when the same epithet can have both negative and positive connotations. This contrast is not accidental. But first things first.
"Blessed": the meaning of the word
Word can mean:
- supremely happy;
- saint;
- crazy, foolish, quiet.
The range of human characteristics that can be described by this word is more than wide. Therefore, one must be careful with the epithet. Both offending and complimenting can be done with the help of the lexeme "blessed". The meaning of a word depends on the context. But where did it come from in Russian vocabulary?
Etymology
In the Old Slavonic language there was a word "bologo", which meant happiness. Until now, only its short-voiced form "good" has survived, which has been preserved as a noun and as part of separate words ("bless", "favor", "thank"). Also in the Old Slavonic vocabulary there was a single-root verb "blessing", meaning "to honor", "make happy", "praise". The word in question was part of the paradigm of this partspeech as a passive participle. Therefore, the one who was praised was called blessed. Until now, this meaning has been transformed, and the word itself has migrated from one part of speech to another - from a participle it has become an adjective, as well as a noun.
What does the word "blessed" mean today?
Happy
This word refers to a person not just in a state of happiness, but in its highest degree. He comprehended the meaning of his destiny, feels the fullness of life, inner satisfaction with the conditions of his being. The epithet under discussion is applied to a person when his feeling of happiness has reached its peak and cannot even be described in words. The noun "bliss" derived from it has approximately the same semantics.
Most often the word is used in religious literature. For example, in translations of the Bible into Russian, the place of the Greek "makarios", the Hebrew "ashre", the Latin "beatus" is Russian "blessed". The meaning of the word "holy fool" is more familiar to the modern reader, so he can get confused. Take, for example, the well-known lines from the Gospel of Matthew, which say that "blessed are the hungry and those who thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied." Although we are talking about happy people here, we can conclude that they are about the mentally ill.
The verb "to please" has a slightly different shade of meaning - "to satisfy", "to fulfill all desires".
Holy
BIn this sense, the word refers to obsolete vocabulary. Blessed is the one whom the church considers already saved and abiding in heaven. In Latin, the process of canonization is called beatification. This means that such a person will be revered as close to God. The next step is canonization. For example, the theologians Augustine and Jerome were awarded this title. Of his contemporaries, Mother Teresa the Blessed is the most famous. The meaning of the word "holy" can be determined not only by the context, but also by the capital letter with which this epithet is written.
Who has not heard of St. Basil the Blessed, after whom the temple in Moscow is named? He was canonized as a saint and is highly revered in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born right on the porch in 1469 in the vicinity of Moscow. Almost all his life, Vasily went completely naked and spent the whole year sleeping in the open. For this he was called Blessed, because they believed that he received a revelation from above and by such behavior taught the people morality. It is believed that he was the only person who was afraid of Ivan the Terrible. After the death of Vasily, he ordered the construction of a cathedral on the site of his burial and named the temple after him.
Holy Fool
In this case it is a noun. In order to describe a fool, a stupid or mentally ill person, the lexeme "blessed" is used. The meaning of the word has a negative connotation, although it is used mainly not to offend,and when you need to gently emphasize the presence of a mental illness in a person or some kind of oddity in him.
Most likely, the lexical meaning of the word "blessed" acquired a negative connotation due to the fact that mentally abnormal people were considered saints. They were credited with the gift of divination and higher insight, and their emotional state was explained by the fact that they, they say, communicate with God and are in a prophetic trance. A vivid example of this is the same St. Basil the Blessed. In the modern world, such people are usually sent to asylums for the mentally ill. And earlier, when such a field of medical science as psychiatry did not yet exist, they thought that this is how a person close to God should behave.
This meaning gave life to the noun "wish". So they call an absurd whim, a crazy idea, a whim. Although it does no harm, it is stupid and useless in its essence, as well as the holy fools walking without clothes.
Here are some interesting facts about just one polysemic word.
