Work biography of the word
How the word “work” arose and what it actually means photo: UNSPLASH most of the week in most people is occupied by work. It is curious to see where this word comes from-because often etymology reveals some unexpected or completely obvious side of the phenomenon about the expert: Vladislav Alpatov, associate professor of the Institute of Foreign Languages of the Moscow City Pedagogical University.
It is probably not surprising that the work is a derivative of the word slave. Shansky, that is, initially “what the slave does”, “forced labor, captivity”. Direct correspondence to the same word in German is the work of work known to many Arbeit. However, with the slave itself, in its original meaning, not everything is so simple. It turns out that the same word was connected by the meanings of the “servant” and “child”, especially the “orphan”, that is, “deprived, devoid of parents, and therefore property”.
Moreover, earlier values, probably - precisely the “child” and “orphan”, and not the “servant”. Why so? Perhaps, from the “orphan” to the “servant”, the value developed thanks to the “vaggent position of orphans who performed the most difficult work” or “the use of children and women from among prisoners of war in the extermination of men” Etymological Dictionary of Slavic languages.
As a parallel, the word lad, which in the Old Russian language meant "servant, employee", and in the Old Slavonic, looks brightly. As they say in a playful proverb, “Children's work is the cheapest! In this context, one can recall the category of apprentices - usually the young student performs just the most black, boring or hard work, but at the same time develops skills, with the prospect of becoming a master himself.
Here is such a philosophy of "work". But here, it turns out, we are talking more about the not very pleasant aspect of the work, about what Adam is said in the book of Genesis: “In your sweat, you eat your bread.” But its positive aspect is now expressed, rather, in a word of labor: “The appropriate activity of a person, requiring mental and physical stress, aimed at creating the instruments of production of material and spiritual values” dictionaries D.
Ushakov and S. Ozhegov what we mean by labor and work now, was referred to in the Old Russian language, and it was to work to do. The book of parables about a good wife says: “And taste, like good to do it, and does not fade away the lamp of her all nights,” that is, “she knew what to work well”, in other words, that work by nature is a good thing about the well -known ennoble role of labor!
And just the word deed has a positive shade. This opens up a new look at the etymology of words a week and Monday. Initially, a week is not all seven days, but only Sunday, a day of rest in Christian culture. Such a value is preserved, for example, in the Ukrainian word of Nedil, “Sunday” in other Slavic languages, and is explained simply: the day of non-working, that is, a non-working day.
Now it is clear why a weekly one-because it is a “day after a week”, that is, “day after Sunday”, and-again to work, “do” what to do? If you dig deeper, you can see which words are used in other languages to denote business, work. These are Latin Opera, OPUS, from which the operation, the operative, the operative, co-operation, the opus, as well as the off-Isa, the off-identity and even the op-Timism associated with them.
All this, of course, is already a completely different story, no less interesting and exciting, but requiring a separate conversation, so we will finish on this op-typical note. Updated