The word "archaism" comes from the ancient Greek "archos" - ancient. Archaisms are obsolete words. Nevertheless, we encounter them daily.
Archaic words can, although rarely, be used in everyday speech, and we will not have any problems understanding what has been said. For example, “if”, “eye”, “finger” - everyone understands exactly what meanings are hidden behind these words. But in everyday speech, we are most likely to use their modern counterparts “if”, “eye” and “finger”.
Philologists divide archaisms into several groups. There are lexical archaisms. This means that the word simply acquired a modern synonym, quite different in sound from the original. Lanita became a cheek, a forehead became a forehead, a shuyt became a left hand. The above “if” has become an “if”. Sometimes, as in the case of shuytsa, the word has changed very much. In this case, the dictionary of archaisms will come to the rescue.
Another group of archaisms is even more interesting. These are semantic archaisms. The word is preserved in the language, but has changed its meaning. For example, this is the "belly". Now this word means a very specific part of the body. But archaism "belly" means life. Therefore, the ancient heroes were ready to "put their stomach" in the battle, in the sense - to die.
Phonetic archaisms are the third group. The meaning of the word is preserved, but it is not pronounced exactly as it was before, but very similar, in accordance with modern phonetic norms. For example, there was a "daughter" - it became a "daughter", there was a "city" - it became a "city" and so on.
The most interesting type of archaisms is word-building. This is a word that has retained its meaning, but is formed in a completely different way. A typical example of such archaism is the word “shepherd”. Its modern sound is a shepherd. But the origin is obvious - both come from the verb "graze."
Often you can find archaisms in proverbs and stable phrases: "an eye for an eye", "one as a finger." They are very popular among poets, writers and the writing community in general. Those who especially love archaisms are those who invent names. The names of food products, commercial structures and projects are simply teeming with archaisms.
The archaism used to the place can give additional pathos to the words of the speaker. They love archaisms and satirics, and for the same reason - inappropriate pathos causes a smile and laughter. For obvious reasons, there are many archaisms in books and films on historical topics, as well as in areas characterized by conservatism. The priesthood holds the palm in the use of archaisms, since the modernization of the text of prayers is extremely rare.
The presence of archaisms, of course, is not a feature of only the Russian language. In English there are plenty of them too. This, by the way, greatly complicates the work of translators, especially poetry translators. It’s not enough to understand the meaning of the word, it is necessary to select its Russian counterpart, and it is also desirable to be archaic.
Archaisms must be distinguished from historicisms. Archaisms are obsolete words, but the objects, phenomena, events that they designate have not disappeared anywhere and surround us to this day. Historisms, on the contrary, denote objects and phenomena that have come out of everyday life. For example, armor, peep, onuchi.