A proverb is an element of folklore, oral folk art. They convey age-old wisdom and are a short parable that can sometimes be expressed in just three or four words. The age of many such folk aphorisms is so long that it is sometimes difficult for a modern person to understand them, since they use words and idioms that have long been obsolete, or phrases that have acquired a new meaning today.
Instructions
Step 1
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 "I got caught like chickens." Some reproduce it, mistakenly replacing "in the pluck" with "in the cabbage soup", so the meaning of the phrase is distorted. If in the first case it is assumed that a person has got into some kind of trouble and trouble, then in the second - that he simply made a mistake, got to where he should not be.
Step 2
An example of how the original meaning of the word was lost can be seen on the example of the proverb "Shouts at the whole Ivanovskaya". A modern person might think that we are talking about the Ivanovo region. In fact, the proverb mentions Ivanovskaya Square, where in ancient Moscow heralds read out the royal decrees, shouting them out to the crowd gathered on this occasion.
Step 3
Not very clear to our contemporaries and the proverb "Beat the thumbs" - who are the thugs and why they are beaten, for what are they guilty? This phrase has a meaning - to sit back or do light work. Baklushi - thick chips, from which spoons or toys were then cut out, they were split off from the logs. We were doing this in the winter, when the crop was harvested, and sowing had not yet begun, when there were no special things on the farm. It was kind of fun, easy work.
Step 4
In order to understand the meaning of some proverbs, you need to know the manufacturing technology of an object. For example, the phrase "Salo was, there is soap", which speaks of a radical change in something, will be more understandable to those who know that natural soap is brewed using bacon.
Step 5
The book of the famous philologist NISheiko “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 , it reveals the meaning of many catch phrases, and provides examples of proverbs that were created relatively recently - in the last century.
