I got into an awkward position, made a mistake in calculations, disgraced myself in front of the employees ... As always, I let everyone down. Miscalculated and goofed. Overshot and nothing to change. Spoiled everything in the world. How many situations! But we can say it another way - I sat in a puddle.
Phraseologisms
In many languages, there are independent linguistic units consisting of several words and meaning something common. In the vocabulary of the Russian language, they are called phraseological units. Such phrases are able to accurately and figuratively convey thought, characterizing and evaluating events of reality. The meaning of such a phrase does not convey the words included in it. Therefore, they are difficult to translate and understand for native speakers of another language.
Examples of phraseological units:
- “to make an elephant out of a fly” - to give exaggerated significance to something;
- “hang ears” - get carried away by someone’s stories;
- "fly into the pipe" - to stay with nothing, go bankrupt.
Synopsis Phraseologisms
Phraseologisms-synonyms are combinations of words that carry almost the same meaning, but differ from each other in images, style, shades. For instance:
- to indicate the same signs of something, we can say: “in one world they’re oiled”, “two boots of steam”, “one field of a berry”;
- to strengthen the meaning of the word “many,” they use: “darkness, darkness”, “even a dime a dozen”, “like dogs of uncut”.
It is worth stopping at the consideration of synonyms used to get a person into an awkward position. This is a couple - "sit in a puddle" ("sit in a galosh") and "hit in the mud with your face." In a figurative sense on the moral sphere of human life, dirt is used in the meaning - shame, fall, loss of a good name and so on. A puddle is a wet, dirty place, the same dirt.
Both phraseological units reflect situations of getting into a shameful position. But there is a slight difference. Shocking in the face with a face is a shame; sitting in a puddle is a comic shame. Interestingly, in the dictionary of the Russian language V.I. Dahl, prepared by himself, finds only the first expression, because until the beginning of the 20th century the expression "sit in a puddle" was considered non-literary, obscene. And it was used among the uneducated strata of the population.
Yulia Borisovna Kamchatnova, an independent researcher, says: “At the same time, every native speaker of the Russian language knows that blowing his face in the mud is just shameful, and sitting in a puddle is shameful, and it’s ridiculous and ridiculous. Therefore, as interpreted by dictionaries there can be no doubt about the meaning of both expressions: the shame is not comic in one case and the shame of comic in another. "
Why do they sit in a puddle?
Do not fall, do not drown, do not fall, namely they sit down? This verb implies a certain place on which a person can sit ... And what will be dirty as a result of such a sitting? Some people find it comical.
Perhaps the origin of the aphorism is due to the fact that a person under witnesses himself created a puddle, dirt. Evidence of this is a dirty backside. This can happen if you experience a strong sense of fear. The people have a lot of verbs for such cases: he made a mistake, did it, put it in his pants. This may seem ridiculous to some.
Perhaps that is why Dahl does not mention "sit in a puddle" in his dictionary. He created it for family reading, for exploring the beauty and richness of his native language. Not in his edition and "sit in the galosh", although the word galosh is present.