Recently, well-known politicians and presenters of popular programs have begun to use ancient words in order to offend the opposing side. High popularity recently gained the word "scum." The meaning of this word has become of interest to thousands of people.
Etymology of the word "scum"
Currently, the noun "scum" is considered from several positions:
a) the old word has acquired a new life;
b) in the circles of people interested in linguistics, discussions arise about whether a word whose age is hundreds of years has changed its meaning in our time;
c) among ordinary people, a comic and provocative debate is being fired on whether “scum”, based on the meaning of this word, can be considered a swearing and insulting word.
“Scum” is rude and was used in the speeches of our contemporaries with a negative emotional connotation, clearly not to praise.
Back to basics
Old Russian books did not use vowels. Words were written without vowels and without spaces. Thus, literacy should have known the meaning, pronunciation and spelling of all the words used in the books. Fortunately, the total vocabulary of written Russian words was then not as large as it is now. The chronicler could well know them all and use by value.
If you imagine the writing of the well-known in ancient times, and now the words "frost", then it looked like "Mrz". There are several words based on such letters: scum, frost, bastard, vile, frozen. Without a doubt, all these words are close in meaning and once were cognate, respectively, had similar meanings. What does the word scum mean? Let's get it right.
If so, then the meaning of the word “scum” is determined by such characteristics as “frost, drizzle, cold”. Expanding the idea of ​​a noun, it can be assumed that since it is unpleasant to touch frozen and cold things, the word “scum” may have additional characteristics: “unpleasant, causing trembling”. This is a physical definition.
In a broad sense, the meaning of the word "scum" is not related to the cold. This is an unpleasant, slippery person, not conducive to communication, causing irritation and hostility, disgust, frost on the skin and trembling.
What do the compilers of explanatory dictionaries think?
V. Dahl in his famous dictionary defines the meaning of the word “scum” as characteristic of the territory of use (Kostroma and Yaroslavl regions) synonymous with the following unpleasant words:
The linguist D. N. Ushakov expands the list of synonyms, adding the words "rubbish" and "insignificance" to them, while "scum" is a characteristic of bad people and does not have a plural.
What writers did
Russian writers used the word “scum” to describe the negative traits of the character of people, thereby confirming that the noun changed the physical parameter of the meaning, characteristic of its original basis, to spiritual.
The word “scum” was used in their works by A.P. Chekhov (“One of the many”), A.T. Averchenko (“Kindyakov’s Christmas Day”), V.V. Mayakovsky (“Scum”), V. Pelevin ( "Numbers"). In their opinion, scum is a person who has committed an extremely bad deed and for this he is estranged from God.
Thus, scum is a characteristic of unpleasant traits of a person, but the word is not abusive, although pronouncing it against a person can be considered an insult. Nevertheless, the translation of the word “scum” into English is difficult because the word is defined as abusive (scum) and its close synonym is the word “scum”.