A proverb is an element of folklore, oral folk art. They convey centuries of wisdom and are a short parable, which can sometimes be expressed in just three to four words. The age of many such popular aphorisms is so great that sometimes it is difficult for a modern person to understand them, because they use long-out-of-use words and idioms, or phrases that have acquired a new meaning today.
Instruction manual
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Some proverbs may have a distorted meaning only because when retelling some words were misunderstood. This, for example, refers to such a well-known proverb "Hit, like chickens in the pluck." Some reproduce it, mistakenly replacing “by the grip” with “in the mouth”, therefore the meaning of the phrase is distorted. If in the first case it is assumed that a person has got into some sort of trouble and trouble, then in the second - that he simply made a mistake, got to where he should not be.
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An example of how the original meaning of the word was lost can be considered with the example of the proverb “Shouts at the whole of Ivanovo”. Modern people might think that we are talking about the Ivanovo region. In fact, the proverb mentions Ivanovskaya Square, on which in ancient Moscow heralds read out royal decrees, shouting to the crowd gathered on this occasion.
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Our contemporaries do not really understand the proverb “Beat the buck” - who are the buck and why they are beaten, for which they are guilty? This phrase matters - lounging or doing light work. Baklushi are thick slivers from which spoons or toys were then cut, they were chipped off from logs. We were engaged in this winter, when the harvest was harvested, and the sowing had not yet begun, when there were no special cases on the farm. It was a kind of entertainment, easy work.
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In order to understand the meaning of some proverbs, you need to know the manufacturing technology of an object. For example, the phrase "There was fat, it became soap, " talking about a radical change in something, will be more clear to someone who knows that natural soap is boiled using bacon.
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The book of the famous philologist N.I. Sheiko “Proverbs and sayings of the Russian people: The meaning of proverbs and sayings; Proverbs and sayings of the war years and the Soviet period; Sayings, riddles, jokes, ” in it reveals the meaning of many popular phrases, and gives examples of proverbs that were created relatively recently - in the last century.
