dar125.html

THE GIFT OF THE WORD #125 (178)
Projective lexicon of the Russian language May 9, 2005

Congratulations dear readers
Happy 60th anniversary of the Victory!

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DAR IS 5 YEARS OLD. ANNIVERSARY ISSUE (4)
Final eight
Semantic neologisms
The most successful author's neologisms in the Russian language
30 most common words "Dara".

In the previous three issues, summing up the fifth anniversary of "The Gift", we published 22 of the most popular words that have entered or are coming into use ("scoops", "videology", "eroticon", "metarealism", "lyublya", "osEtit", "one-word ", "to make time", "real", etc.) In this issue, which completes this series of "the very best", we publish 8 more words.

Words are given in order of decreasing frequency of use, which is determined by Yandex . Each word is given with a reference to the corresponding issue of "The Gift" or to another source, accompanied by a definition and examples, as well as dates of first use and publication (sometimes these vary greatly, especially in Soviet times).

Further, after the section “Semantic neologisms”, we will present two corrected and supplemented lists:
1. The most successful author's neologisms in the Russian language.
2. 30 most common words "Dara".

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23
ale 310
For the first time: "The Gift of Speech", vol. February 23, 19, 2001 Published: Novaya Gazeta , September 5, 2002.

Elya - “e-mail” (“send by ele ”) and “electronic letter” (“send to ele ”).

Today a long ale arrived from Stas, complaining that his application was cut down again.

I’m already sending our partner a third ale , but there’s not a word from him.

Here is a draft of the joint statement. Add your comments and pass the ale around.

Throw me an elka before work, when and where we meet.

It’s been three hours now, nothing from you, I miss you, send me an electric card.

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24
videocracy 307
1987 For the first time in the essay "Videocracy", broadcast on Radio Liberty (from New York) in September 1992. Published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 1992, November 27, p. 8; "New Russian Word", 1993, February 6-7, p.18.

videocracy (video + kratiya) - the power of visual images and means of communication over public consciousness; a system of visual images and representations as a source or means of political domination.

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25
lies 290
Single word as a literary genre. "Continent", #104, 2000,
With. 301.

lies - a life lived by lies; a deceitful or false way of being; deceptiveness, illusoryness, illusoryness of life itself.

As you know, A.I. Solzhenitsyn called on us to “not live by lies.” If we live in contradiction to this commandment, then this is called “ falsehood .”

Only towards the end of his successful lie did Ivan realize that he had exchanged his talent, albeit small, for comfort, albeit very large.

A person has one life, but there are many lies . And they are all subtracted from life, leaving in the end zero, and sometimes even minus

All mystical teachings in India are aimed at overcoming the lies of samsara.

If something attracts you like a drug, and you can no longer live without it, tell yourself: this is a lie, this is a ghost that will not exist the moment I tear out the root of passion from myself.

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26
chronocide 272
For the first time in German: Tempozid. Prolog zu einer Auferstehung der Zeit. Lettre International. Berlin. Heft 47 IY. Vj./1999, 65-72. An essay awarded a prize at an international competition in 1999. M. Epstein. Chronocide: Prologue to the resurrection of time. "October", #7, 2000, pp. 157-171.

chronocid (Greek chronos time + Lat. caedere to kill) - time-killing,
violence against the natural course of time, history, evolution; destruction of the connection of times, bringing one time into
sacrifice to another.

Chronocide , genocide and ecocide are generally linked by a direct line of revolutionary succession. The revolution begins with chronocide , the ideological murder of the past in the name of an abstract future. Then the revolution begins to consume the lives of real people, turning into genocide - the murder of entire peoples, estates and classes that are destined to remain in the past, because they are unworthy of the future. Finally, the tired revolution, despairing of delivering what it promised and having destroyed the productive forces of society, ends in predatory consumption and destruction of nature - in ecocide.

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27
become numb 266
For the first time in the online magazine Grani.ru on May 30, 2001.

It is no coincidence that the verb “ (o)network ” is consonant with such words as “satan” and “stenetet”, for it presupposes insanity and frenzy due to passion for the network.

(o) network (cf. turn to stone, become wooden) - to merge with the network, to give oneself entirely to the network, to “get caught up” in it, to become more and more networked, network-like, insane, obsessed, a network addict, a network fan.

Our friend is completely petrified, does not move away from the screen, even when reading a paper newspaper.

Are you dumbfounded ? The child is struggling, and you are glued to the chat.

Teenagers who get a personal computer often become angry, and it ends sadly - with virtual autism, a reluctance to go out into real life.

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28
self-righteousness, self-righteous 263
For the first time "The Gift of the Word", vol. 37, January 28, 2002. Published in Russian Journal , November 11, 2002.

self-righteous - one who considers himself always and in everything right; confident in his rightness and/or righteousness; insensitive to someone else's point of view, convinced of something once and for all.

self-righteousness - unchanging and unshakable confidence in one’s rightness; obsession and blindness to being right.

It is important for any national culture to have the concept of self-righteousness in its vocabulary, since it protects against the identification of truth and rightness. A self-righteous person, obsessed with his own rightness, becomes blind to the truth. A culture devoid of this concept becomes insensitive to fanaticism and dogmatism.

Beware of the indifferent and self-righteous . For the former there is no truth, for the latter there is nothing but it. For some, the truth is nowhere; for others - in yourself.

In the epilogue of the novel “Crime and Punishment,” Raskolnikov dreams of self-righteous people of the future who will exterminate each other and all living things in the name of the royal “I am the truth.” How to distinguish self-righteousness from madness? Obsession with being right is the most contagious virus over which medicine has no control.

Self-righteousness is the general name for the historical temptations and diseases of our era. Communism, fascism, fundamentalism and radicalism of various religious and atheistic shades are all varieties of self-righteousness .

What a country! There are only tyrants and self-righteous people in power. Everyone has their own nonsense and their own truth, and the main thing is that they do not distinguish nonsense from the truth and stand for nonsense as for the truth.

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29

sunny 230
For the first time: 1984, book "The Great Owl". BBC radio series, April 1989. Published: Great Owl. Philosophical and mythological essay. New York: Word/Word, 1994, pp. 51-53. The Gift of Words, vol. 3, May 1, 2000.

sun (a combination of semi-bases from the words “sun” and “midnight”, with emphasis on the first syllable, as in the word “midnight”) - a black sun emitting darkness; glow of darkness.

“ Sunshine ” brings together into one word those images that abound in poetry, philosophy, and the apocalyptic tradition. “Night is also the sun,” said Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Georges Bataille took this aphorism as an epigraph to the book “Inner Experience”. The image of the sun is found in Hugo: “A terrible black sun radiating the night” (“Inaccessible to the imagination, this negative is beautiful,” notes Paul Valéry). From O. Mandelstam: “I woke up in the cradle, / Shining on the black sun.”

The sun is the sun absorbed by the night, and it is the night that emits the invisible Sun. The daytime Sun sets in eternal night - and at the same moment the non-setting Sun rises from the night. The emblem of the Sun is a black shaggy disk emitting black rays, and the motto is “Light from Darkness.” It must be admitted that this word sounds very expressive, chanted by one united choir of millions. " Sunny ! Sunny ! Sunny !" - rushes at twelve o'clock at night from the main Loudspeaker, multiplied by thousands of amplifiers throughout the country, and they say that very sensitive owls are able to distinguish their own voice, returned to them through the hearing aid at the very moment when they vote for Solnoch .

The motif of the sun, i.e. the new sun that will shine from the revolutionary darkness runs through all post-October journalism. Let the old heavenly sun, already setting in the West, plunge into darkness, and then from the East in all its menacing splendor a new, black luminary will rise, a child of earth and coal, a symbol of the union of peasants and workers. Severe politicians and young poets dream about this apocalyptic sun :

“Comrades, we love the sun, which gives us life, but if the rich and aggressors tried to seize the sun for themselves, we would say: Let the sun go out, let darkness reign, eternal night...”
Leon Trotsky. September 11, 1918

We will extinguish the tired sun,
Let us light another light in the universe.
Andrey Platonov. Poem. "The Universe" (1922)

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thirty

time writing 216
For the first time: "Russian Journal", December 16, 2002. The Gift of Words, vol. 53.

vremyapis (cf. painting, light painting, sound painting) - written by time, a set of significant traces and imprints of time.

For us, these Khrushchev concrete blocks are like the samizdat archive. Same style. Time recording of the sixties.

Mandelstam in his “Slate Ode” reads the time-writing of rocks, the visible imprints of time in the image of uplifted earth:
Fear writes here, shift writes here
Lead milk stick.
Here the draft matures
Pupils running water.

New genre: time-writing . A certain space is freed and a pure zero mark is set. And we observe what signs time leaves in this place. Nobody but time. Time is the only artist. Time writing is the writing that time leaves on a cleanly mown square of meadow, or a cleanly shaved square of a face, or a cleanly wiped square of glass... The art of time. Tempo-art.

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Semantic neologisms

Along with lexical neologisms, newly formed words, there are semantic neologisms in the language, previously existing words that acquire new meanings (for example, “satellite” in the meaning of “artificial Earth satellite”). Among these in “The Gift” are “ all-man ,” “ erotology ,” and “ essayism .”

The word “ all-man ” was created by F. Dostoevsky and was used once in his speech about Pushkin in the sense of “all-responsiveness,” the ability for all-human brotherhood. “To become a real Russian, to become completely Russian, perhaps, means only (in the end, emphasize this) to become the brother of all people, an all-man , if you want.” The Gift offers two other meanings. One of which is continuously associated with Dostoevsky, the other has nothing in common with him: “ an all-man - a potentially immortal and omnipotent person who has absorbed all the power of technical organs, electronic communications, genetic constructs, computer intelligence - will he remain human? Compared to the intensity of the contradictions of the new all-man , biotechnospecies, the struggle in the soul of the “ all-man ” of the Stavrogin, Karamazov or even Pushkin type may seem petty. Is it possible to have the speed of light or the mobility of a wave - and still be homesick? Is it possible to penetrate with your gaze into the subcutaneous fatty tissue, into the structure of the internal organs - and at the same time enjoy touching the skin of your beloved creature? Is it possible to know “everything” about another and at the same time love him?” Obviously, such an “all-man” of the future is a semantic neologism.

The word " erotology " was used very rarely and only in relation to ancient treatises on love and sexuality (for example, "Kama Sutra"). The new meaning proposed in the article “Erotology and Sexology” ( Grani.ru, 10/16/2001 ) gives erotology the status of an independent humanitarian science, in contrast to the medical-physiological orientation of sexology. “From the very beginning, sexology was guided by medical interests, was aimed at the study and healing of diseases and disorders in the development of sexuality... Erotology , on the contrary, turned to the norm, to the desired and proper, to the positive possibilities of eros... The difference between sexology and erotology is this is a difference not in stages, but in types of science, the difference between natural science and human science. Sexology studies the biological, physiological and psychophysiological nature of the sexual instinct, while erotology studies the spiritual-physical nature, psychocultural issues and conventionally symbolic forms of love relationships... Ancient treatises on " the art of love," as a rule, contain rudimentary elements of both sexology and erotology , which are differentiated only many centuries later."

The word " essayism " was introduced by the Austrian writer Robert Musil in his novel "The Man Without Qualities" (1930 - 1940, unfinished). Essayism for Musil is a way of “living hypothetically.” "About the same as essays in succession
of its sections takes the subject from many sides, without covering it completely - for the subject, once fully embraced, suddenly loses its volume and declines into concept - in approximately the same way one should... approach the world and one’s own life." Essayism in that sense , which was first proposed in 1982 (in my Essay on Essays), is defined as “the convergence and interaction of conceptual and figurative thinking in modern culture; revival of the mental integrity of myth based on the author's reflection." This is not a hypothetical way of existence, but an expansion of the essayistic genre into literature and culture; a free-associative, reflective manner of writing, combining the properties of different genres and disciplines. "The essay combines: existential authenticity coming from document, mental generality coming from philosophy, figurative concreteness and plasticity coming from literature. An essay is part confession, like a diary, part argument, like an article, part narrative, like a story. An essay remains itself only when it constantly crosses the boundaries of other genres. /.../ Essayism is a direction much broader and more powerful than any of
philosophical or artistic movements, broader than phenomenology or
existentialism, surrealism or expressionism, etc., precisely because
it is not the direction of one of the cultural branches, but is a special quality
of all modern culture, attracted to neo-mythological integrity, to
the fusion of not only the image and concept within culture, but also of culture itself - with
being beyond the limits of culture." In this interpretation, " essayism " is also a semantic neologism. [1]

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1. Unfortunately, I became acquainted with Musil’s novel only after the publication of its complete two-volume translation into Russian in 1984. However, the word “essayism” first appeared in Russian in Robert Musil’s book “Selected”, M., 1980 (in comments on p. 361). I thank culturologist Olga Vainshtein (Moscow) for this message.

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The most successful author's neologisms in the Russian language

Which of the author's neologisms introduced into the Russian language over the past two centuries have turned out to be the most successful and in demand in the language? The following list of words with decreasing frequency is compiled according to Yandex . It is, of course, far from complete, but it outlines the historical background of neological activity. The author of the word is indicated in brackets and then the number of its uses throughout the Russian-language Internet.

It is now difficult to imagine a language without words such as “industry”, “drawing” or “momentary”. Meanwhile, the word “momentary,” formed by Mayakovsky from the expression “this minute,” was first officially registered only in 1990, in the 22nd edition of the Ozhegov Dictionary.
We don’t notice how new words enter our speech, and when we realize it, they can’t be cut out with an ax.

Of course, the number of uses is far from the only criterion for the “success” of a word. Words can be inventive, semantically full-fledged, aesthetically attractive, and at the same time rarely used, kept in the “reserve” of the language, such as, for example, Khlebnikov’s beautiful words “tvoryanin” and “things”. At the same time, the simplest stereotypical formation
abstract noun based on the corresponding adjective
Formally, it is also considered a “new word,” hence the Leninist neologism “party” (from “party”), as well as some of Karamzin’s, created according to the same model. On all linguistic and aesthetic scales, Khlebnikov’s “creativity” will outweigh Lenin’s “party spirit.” But one cannot erase from history the fact that the 20th century in Russia, and indeed in a huge part of the world, passed under the sign not of “creativity”, but of “party spirit,” which was reflected in the frequency of its use, which is now clearly on the decline. About 20 years ago, “party spirit” would have been one of the first places in the list of neologisms, but now it is pushed back to 23rd place, below “mediocrity” and “gag.” Maybe the 21st century will pass under the sign of still marginal “creativity”? At least that is the hope of this project.

Based on the results of this list, the top five Russian word creators are M. Lomonosov, N. Karamzin, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, V. Khlebnikov and V. Mayakovsky.

industry (N. Karamzin) - 26,191,577 uses
pump (M. Lomonosov) - 17.132.591
sensitivity (N. Karamzin) - 3.799.694
drawing (M. Lomonosov) - 3.390.270
oxygen (M. Lomonosov) - 2.314.802
touching (N. Karamzin) - 1.149.382
constellation (M. Lomonosov) - 1.086.768
pendulum (M. Lomonosov) - 709.618
mine (M. Lomonosov) - 673.185
love (N. Karamzin) - 647.706

humanity (N. Karamzin) - 420.518
momentary (V. Mayakovsky) - 409.356
fateful (F. Chaliapin) - 321.442
achievable (N. Karamzin) - 304.561
nihilism, nihilist (I. Turgenev) - 249. 889
abstruse, abstruse (A. Kruchenykh) - 229.663
nymphet (V. Nabokov) - 212.684
noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin, E. Leroy, V. Vernadsky) - 187.610
mediocrity (I. Severyanin) - 127.952
spiteful critic, malice (M. Saltykov-Shchedrin) - 124.036

gag (K. Bryulov) -122.921
future (N. Karamzin) - 71.260
partisanship (V. Lenin) - 57.940
Ladomir (V. Khlebnikov) - 55.049
stupidity (M. Saltykov-Shchedrin) - 53.545
whopper (V. Mayakovsky) - 42.362
to fade away (F. Dostoevsky) - 38.868
bungler, bungler (M. Saltykov-Shchedrin) - 36.827
unity (V. Soloviev) - 34.747
pro-meeting (V. Mayakovsky) - 22.445

foam remover (M. Saltykov-Shchedrin) -19.428
chronotope (A. Ukhtomsky, M. Bakhtin) - 19.415
defamiliarization (V. Shklovsky) - 14.952
clerk (K. Chukovsky) - 9.932
education (A. Solzhenitsyn) - 8.440
laugher (V. Khlebnikov) - 7.186
wet foot (A. Shishkov) - 5.967
disaster (A. Zinoviev) - 5.111
all-man (F. Dostoevsky) - 4.972
semiosphere (Yu. Lotman) - 4.192

Budutlyanin (V. Khlebnikov) 3.384
out-of-place (M. Bakhtin) - 1.974
creator (V. Khlebnikov) - 720
self-claim (A. Voznesensky) - 596
terry cloth (D. Prigov) - 409
tolerance (E. Yevtushenko) - 371
mother (A. Voznesensky) - 151

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30 most common words "Dara"

Links lead to pages with definitions and examples of this word

One of the unexpected generalizations that arises in connection with these statistics: new terms and terminological formations, international in lexical composition, take root in the language faster than Russian words with a broader and less defined meaning. Although in the total set of new words the terms constitute a suppressed minority, in terms of the degree of use they easily reach the top statistical ranks. Thus, of the 30 most common words of “Dara”, almost half - 13 - have international or foreign roots, and ten of these words can be considered as terms. They hold five positions in the top ten (videology, eroticon, metarealism, realism, transculture). Meanwhile, out of 838 words published over five years in the author's issues of "The Gift", the number of words with international roots does not exceed 10%. Oddly enough, this is an ingrained habit of the Russian language: it is more willing to root in oneself
other people's words...

Determining the frequency of a particular word is sometimes difficult. For example, the word “lyublya” often occurs not as an independent word, but as a result of a common typo in the word “lyublya” (“I love you”). How to distinguish a word from a typo - look through thousands of contexts? You have to run a combined search “Lublya + Epstein”, which will ensure the connection of the word with the original source. But this cut off those cases of use where the connection with the primary source is interrupted, unknown to the speaker, which is the goal: to give the word an independent life. Nevertheless, in such cases, I cite the underestimated data of a combined search: out of 83 thousand “lew”, only 4.632 are associated with the name of the author. We have to underestimate the frequency of a word by several hundred or thousands in order to avoid its overestimation by tens of thousands. Similar difficulties are found when searching for the word "real" (how to distinguish from a football team?) Or the word "Elya" (how to distinguish from your own?). In all these cases, I bring the smallest number of uses of this word.

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Mikhail Epstein's network project "The Gift of Words" has been published since April 17, 2000. Every week, several new words are sent to subscribers, with definitions and examples of use. These words are not in any dictionary, and yet they denote significant phenomena and concepts for which there has not yet been a place in the language and public consciousness. "Dar" also conducts discussions about the Russian language, discusses letters and suggestions of readers. "Gift" can serve as a manual by word -making, introducing linguistic fantasies and mental technologies into the world of linguistic fantasies. "The word controls the brain, the brain - hands, hands - kingdoms" (Velimir Khlebnikov).

Subscribe to "Dar" your friends and acquaintances
Subscription form - in the same place as all previous issues
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Radio station "Echo of Moscow" about the book "Sign_probela" .
26 April. Presenter: Nikolai Alexandrov
The text of the program in the program "Books":

"The New Literary Review publisher Mikhail Epstein's book was a sign of the gap: about the future of the humanities ." One of the recognized masters of the essay genre, Mikhail Epstein this time raises this genre to the heights of philosophical, even ontological. In his opinion, generally the future The literature (both artistic and scientific), however, in this book there is another genre designation - Epstein asks to perceive the chapters of his book as manifestos or small treatises. "-the-building. As the author assures the humanitarian thought, then with the past, then with the future, then with the present (postmodernism). The meaning is in the justification of the future, that is, the assessment of the present as grain, the beginning of the future. Therefore, of all kinds of" post- " Epstein proposes to replace with “proto-” and acts with his concept of “proteism” as the most fruitful method in solving humanitarian problems. - Another term of Epstein). As an examples of prosthetic analytics in the book, you can find thoughts about the sign of the gap (how important it is in the text, in the broad sense of the word) or, for example, about the preposition "B", which Epstein considers the main word of the Russian language. "