What is archaism? Examples of use in modern speech

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:43

Language never stands still. He, like a living organism, obeys the laws of relentless development. Some layers of it are significantly modified, some are being replaced by new ones. Of course, this process is influenced by the development of society (changes in the social order, hierarchy), and progress in science and technology.

It is no coincidence that in connection with the development of the Internet and computerization, a huge number of new words - neologisms, sometimes barbarisms (that is, lexemes that have not yet been fully mastered, often differing in foreign spelling) are being introduced into the language. Whereas obsolete words and concepts are becoming a thing of the past. But they do not disappear completely, because this process is slow. And as long as people live who know what, say, the word "Komsomol" or "Workers' Faculty" means, or works of art that use obsolete words (often requiring explanations for the modern reader in the form of comments, footnotes, additions), they will not die at all. It is customary to subdivide lexemes that are fading into the past into archaisms and historicisms. The last ones arewords denoting obsolete phenomena and concepts, things.

For example, "armyak", "caftan", "carriage", "clerk" - today there is no longer such a type of clothing, vehicle, position. There are no serfs and boyars. Therefore, these are historicisms. But what then is archaism? This is an obsolete word that denotes an existing phenomenon, concept, object. "Lanity" is the same as cheeks, "fingers" - fingers, "vyya" - neck. But we don't say that. To better understand what archaism is and what its role is in language and literature, let's analyze what its types are.

For a number of words, neither the meaning nor the spelling has changed, but they are pronounced differently in modern speech. For example, "music", "symbol". Indeed, in the 19th century, the emphasis was not placed where it is now: they said "music", "symbol". These are phonetically obsolete words. What is semantic archaism? This is a word that has one or more meanings obsolete. For example, "not sparing his belly." It's not about a specific part of the body. This word once meant "life".

Or "scoundrel" - once this word was not a curse, a curse, but indicated a person unfit for military service. That is, the word remains, but it is now used in a completely different context, with a different meaning.

What is lexical or lexical derivational archaism? For example, whosuch a "thief" in the phraseological unit "like a thief in the night"? Once this word meant "thief", but now it is used only as part of this idiom, and then extremely rarely. Thieves exist, but the token is obsolete. But, for example, "friendship" instead of "friendship", "fisherman" instead of "fisherman" are quite clear to us, since only the suffixes have changed. These are Russian lexical and derivational archaisms. We understand that “dol” is “valley”, “questioning” is “ask”, but such words as “food” (dishes, food) or “the other day” (the day before) already need comments. Nevertheless, archaisms, obsolete words (including historicisms), help the writer to recreate the flavor of the era. Thus, they play a stylistic role, especially if they are used in the speech or works of contemporaries. Names often help to understand what archaism is (for example, the Namedni program or the word "estate" often used recently in names), and phraseological units in which there are obsolete elements ("seven spans in the forehead" - from " span" - a measure of length). To understand the meaning of such a name or idiom, we need to refer to a special dictionary (for example, obsolete words and expressions).