When you read classical literature, sometimes you come across words whose meanings are unknown. In addition, many of them are the first time you hear. This is not surprising, because the Russian language, like any other in the world, is quite dynamic, every year new words appear in it, and others go out of use. So it happened with the word "Izhitsa." This word can be found with Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in his work "The Story of How Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich Quarreled."
Value
Many people know about the existence of the Old Slavonic alphabet, which was the first Cyrillic and consisted of 45 letters. Initially, it was formed in the 9th century to transmit information in the Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic languages.
So, Izhitsa is a letter from this alphabet, which was later also in the pre-reform Russian alphabet. We can assume that the named sign was born due to another - ipsilon, which is now in the Greek alphabet. Izhitsa was used in Russian to denote the modern letter “and”. And also sometimes found in the words of the Greek language.
Display
The word "izhitsa" had a huge number of options for drawing. This letter was depicted in different ways: either it looked like a modern "y", then it looked like the number 8 with a cut off crown. Its numerical value in Old Slavonic is 400.
Izhitsa was rarely used both in ancient writing, so in the 19-20 century. Sometimes it had the meaning "yu." If it was used with "o", then it was just the meaning of the modern letter "y". Moreover, initially this combination was completely like “oh”, when there was not enough space, “u” went to the top of “o”, and so we got that famous sign, similar to the cropped number 8.
Transformation
Izhitsa is the letter that they tried to restore many times, and then again "destroy". So it was in the 14th century. Then it was decided to restore this sign, or rather its Greek copy - ipsilon. At that time, the letter loses its “lower tail” and therefore becomes mutated. By the way, it is precisely the last version of Izhitsa that can now be found in church books.
Reading
The correct reading of the Izhita at that time was difficult to determine. Depending on the combination with other signs, it could be read as “and”, “u” and even “c”. The presence of a superscript element also formally influenced the reading of this sign. If there is an accent over the sign, then this is the vowel “and”, but if there is nothing, then the consonant “in”.
Also, the use of kendema or diarrhea was often seen. These elements came from the Greek language. But it is worth noting that even so, the signs could not be independent elements of the alphabet.
Russian language
In Russian, Izhitsa is a letter that fell after the church alphabet into the Russian alphabet. This happened under Peter I. Just in the early 1700s. the king introduced simplified writing, in which the alphabet got rid of some letters and superscript elements. Izhitsa was canceled at the same time.
After a couple of years, it was decided to restore this sign. In 1735 she was again “buried”. And after 23 years they were restored again. At the end of the 18th century they decided to cancel, and at the beginning of the 19th century to restore again. And although in 1857 they tried to remove the Izhitsa again, this proposal was missed "by the ears", as the sign was so rare. It was used less and less, sometimes even put in brackets, indicating the rarity of use.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a certain active use of izitsa began to be observed, although only a couple of years. In 1917, spelling reform took place, in which this sign was not mentioned at all. But there is confidence that it was then that Izhitsa was completely canceled. At least this is indicated by the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
In fact, the letter disappeared gradually when the civilian alphabet of Peter appeared. Some later began to believe that the appearance of the letter “y” was connected with Izhitsa, although there is an assumption that the style “U” is not a continuation of “Ѵ, ѵ”, but the transformation “uk”.
Other options
Krylov’s etymological dictionary says about the word “izhitsa” that it is the letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, which occupied the 42nd position. It was previously borrowed from the Old Slavonic alphabet. The basis for the formation of this sign was the "yoke." It is also believed that the mark resembles a yoke, which has the shape of an arc and is indicated by the word “yoke”.
Besides the fact that Gogol mentioned Izhitsa, speaking about the shape of the mouth of one of the characters of his work, there are also sayings. For example, "register a mortar" means punishment with rods.