What is a "shuytsa" - dictionaries will tell us. The word it means "left hand." Together with the “right hand” (“right hand”) the word appeared in the language in time immemorial. To clarify the question of what "shuytsa" is from the point of view of etymology, let us turn to dictionaries.
Origin of the word
To begin with, consider the adjectives "shui" and "gum" ("gum") - in the meaning of "left" and "right" they are often used together.
Similar in sound forms with the meaning of "left" are noted by Max Fasmer, in his etymological dictionary: "shui", "shui", "showwoman", "shuvak" and others, go back to the common ancient Indian savyas. They were once used by the southern Slavic peoples.
And Vladimir Dal reports on the existence of Permian and Arkhangelsk synonyms of this word ("shulepa", "shulga", or - "left-handed," left-handed).
A lexeme with the same meaning is available in the Brief Church Slavonic Dictionary. It sounds like this: "shui."
It is most likely possible to answer the question of what “shuytsa” is as a word form: this noun is a suffix formation from the adjective “shuy”. Under the influence of natural acceleration of pronunciation for a living language, the sound "and" in the word "Shuiytsa" was reduced and merged with "and short." So there was a "shuytsa".
Similarly, the word "right hand" also entered the old vocabulary.
It is easy to find a synonym for the word "shuytsa". Of those used in modern Russian, it is the only one. It is the phrase "left hand".
Dahl also cites other, now obsolete, synonyms: “left-handed”, “left-handed”, “paks”.
The noun "shuytsa" is inanimate, has a feminine gender, the first declension, a singular.
Use
This word along with “right hand” we will meet, for example, when reading old descriptions of some of the emblems of Russian cities.
Here is one of them - for the urban settlement of Loknya, located in the southeast of the Pskov region:
In a green field, an old Russian knight in silver armor and robes turned to the right, blowing a golden horn and leaning on a scarlet (red) with gold ornaments fighting shield ...
Or for the city of Veliky Ustyug, Vologda Oblast:
One pitcher under the right hand of Neptune on his lap, the other under his shuytsa (left hand) on an elevation
Quite often, the word used was also used by Russian writers in their works. In the once quite published and famous historical novel by S. Borodin, Dmitry Donskoy, we read:
The shaggy and already gray-haired warrior, having thrown off his shell, went out with the others from the fires to the edge of the night and fell, crying out his hand chopped off in battle.
- Oh shuytsa! Shuytsa, where are you? Where are you lying, darling? A lot of you smacked, scorched. Where are you nun? Oh shuytsa, my shuytsa! It would be better to lie with my bones, it would be better to be without you! What am I now? Oh, I’m not a warrior, and I’m not a plowman ...
In the preface to the autobiographical novel, Uprising in the Desert, Lawrence of Arabia (Thomas Edward Lawrence) writes:
It was here that the traditions of English diplomacy (“right hand and shuytsa British diplomacy”), which for the glory of the British king, signs documents and agreements of a rather contradictory nature with the right and left hand, were very clearly manifested.
And try to understand what "shuytsa" is in the following statement of V. I. Lenin:
If, for example, we find that in “Liberation” there is a right hand and a shuyz, a harmful, treacherous shuyt, then does not full sincerity oblige us to fight mercilessly with this shuy?
Obviously, this word in a figurative sense can be used in the meaning of "false information." On the contrary, “right hand” means “true, truthful data.”
So where is the shuyza, there is the right hand.
In this example of the Russian proverb, the noun in question also found its place.
Now you know what a shuija is.