История одного эвфемизма

Tkadlčik V., 1964: Dvojí ch v hlaholici, Slavia, XXXIII(2). 1964, 182—193.

E-mail: vik_ush@yahoo.com

Август 2002 г.

Viktorija Ušinskienė

A history of a euphemism

The article analyses the history and semantic evolution of the Russian word хер, a Church Slavonic borrowing meaning the Cyrillic letter х. For several centuries, the word was also used in Russian as an euphemism for a phonetically-similar obscene term of abuse. The orthographic reform of 1918 replaced the old name for the letter х. For this reason, the word хер lost its original meaning in the 20ᵗʰ century, and gradually developed from a euphemism into an obscenity in its own right.