Initially, civilians were those people whose appearance was characteristic of a non-military person. But over time, military intelligence began to develop, and the general appearance ceased to be a guarantee that this person had nothing to do with the military forces.
What does the word "civilian" mean
Explanatory Dictionary of Ozhegov S. I. reveals that civilian is a non-military, civilian, or something inanimate (dress, shoes) intended for a non-military person. From Fasmer M.'s etymological dictionary, you can learn that this word comes from the outdated German expression staat, meaning state and government. Then he was influenced by the Latin word status - state. From this it can be deduced that a civilian is a person who is in the public service, not intersecting with the military area.
A brief description of the word according to the rules of the Russian language
The word civilian can be described as follows:
- quality adjective;
- "state" - root, "sk" - suffix, "ij" - ending;
- transcription -[ˈʂtat͡skʲɪɪ̯];
- synonyms: secular, civil, civil and so on;
- antonyms: military, army and so on.
People in civilian clothes
On the Internet, a biographical directory "Chronos" is presented, which contains information about all employees of Soviet intelligence from 1917 to 1991. It goes without saying that the main number of biographies refers to military intelligence officers. But among them you can see both Chekists punishing everyone whom they considered a potential enemy of the Soviet regime, as well as members of the MGB, NKGB, OGPU, NKVD. In their arsenal of means was such a favorite way of working as infiltrating any society or environment of a famous person by wearing ordinary clothes and using the documents of a civilian without military regalia. This made it possible to gain confidence in the necessary person and secretly collect all the necessary information from him. Therefore, the word "civilian" is a lexical unit that has a very conditional definition.
