DOI: 10.18503/2658-3186-2022-6-2-49-53
Abstract. The article deals with the history of Russian phraseological units born by the Gospel expression Вьдовица въмета\mа (въврьга\mа) дъвh лептh (the widow`s mite). For revealing the semantic changes of the original meaning of the expression, the author takes into consideration materials from different phraseological dictionaries and from the Russian National Corpus. The analysis of the texts dated 1807–2019 showed that biblical units from the Gospel parable внести / вносить, принести / приносить свою лепту (contribute one’s bit) and лепта вдовицы (the widow’s mite) have gone through some semantic changes. Basing on the data from the Russian National Corpus, the author concluded that the peak of active usage of the variant принести / приносить лепту dated the last part of the XIX century, but to the first part of the XX century this variant lost its popularity. The preferable variant among the native speakers of Russian was «внести / вносить свою лепту» and it actively functioned in fiction and publicistic texts of the XXI century. In modern fiction and publicistic discourses this variant is fixed with the meaning принимать посильное участие в чём-либо (participate in smth.) and this is the result of the change of the direct meaning of component лепта «мелкая греческая монета» (lepton – unit of Greek currency) to the figurative meaning посильный вклад (fair contribution). In contexts of the XXI century this expression has negative connotation and loses the connection with the Gospel parable. Phraseological unit лепта вдовицы (the widow's mite) could be marked as archaistic (on statistical data of the Russian National Corpus): from 37 variants 25 are dated 1807-1916. The author comes to the conclusion that although semantic changes have influenced the original Gospel phrase, the main stays the same – its valuable component.
Keywords: biblical expression, gospel phrase, gospel text, the widow`s mite, contribute one`s bit.
Аuthor:
Natalya V. Pozdnyakova, PhD in Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language, General Linguistics and Mass Communication Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University, Magnitogorsk, Russia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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For citation
Pozdnyakova N. V. The Widow’s Mite: the Fate of the Gospel Expression in the History of the Russian Language, Gumanitarno-pedagogicheskie issledovaniya [Humanitarian and pedagogical Research], 2022, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 49–53.