The main rules of scandal
Unfortunately, modern life does not exclude scandals.
Communication with others often forces you to be able to stand up for yourself. Surely, everyone in their life has thought about how not to cross the line beyond which a person ceases to be a social being and turns into an evil monster. Therefore, the problem of how to swear correctly is very relevant. First of all, you need to learn to control yourself. Keep in mind that any violent scandal may sooner or later lead to a point after which it will be difficult for you to manage your actions. Therefore, you need to learn to control yourself and interrupt the scandal in time. Any situation will be resolved most effectively only when passions subside and negative emotions become less obvious.
Learn not to harbor resentment. Accumulating as a heavy burden, they will sooner or later result in a huge scandal. A much greater effect can be achieved by discussing the problem immediately after it arises in a calm environment.
Always try to choose the right time and place to sort things out. This is of particular importance because otherwise, the desired result will not be obtained. For example, a husband who is late for work will not hear your requests for help, no matter how convincing they may be.
When the conflict is at its height
Don't forget that a quarrel is a natural process. But, despite this, you should not go beyond certain limits. The word is not a sparrow, so sometimes you have to pay for a long time for some words. To come out of a conflict as friends, but at the same time with self-esteem, you need to know how to quarrel with a man correctly:
Rule #1
Under no circumstances should you humiliate or offend your partner. He is your close person, you know his weak points. It is worth remembering that he did not trust you so that you would then hit the same places.
Rule #2
Never compare your partner with other men or criticize his parents. These are some of the most painful points for absolutely any man.
Rule #3
There is no point in trying to win. To come out of a quarrel on good terms, you need to make sure that no one is left humiliated or a loser. Your victory is his defeat. Therefore, there is no need to discuss who is to blame. You should immediately look for what caused the misunderstanding and how to resolve it.
Rule #4
It is foolish to hope that the conflict will resolve on its own. Therefore, you should not demonstratively leave the house, lock yourself in a room, or do any other actions to “leave”. If you feel like you need to take a breath, peacefully offer it to your man. In any case, a little break will be beneficial. But “leaving” can lead to a disagreement that will last several days, or even weeks.
Rule #5
Learn to admit your mistakes. If you feel that you are wrong, you do not need to defend any of your rights to the last. Find strength in yourself and admit your mistakes. The man will be immensely grateful to you for such an outcome of the quarrel.
There are several secrets
, how to calm down your ardor and come out of the conflict as friends. For example, in old Russian intelligent families there was an interesting custom. As soon as the spouses began to quarrel, they switched from a friendly “you” to a coldly official “you”. This treatment cooled the ardor a little and made it possible not to resort to base insults.
Another secret to managing a quarrel is even simpler, and also fun. During a quarrel, as soon as you feel it’s time to make peace, go to the bathroom. Go to the tap and take some water into your mouth. Look at yourself in the mirror, carefully and calmly, and... start making a face! Gradually, the ardor will subside and it will be much easier to make reconciliation. You can even go out to your partner with water in your mouth, then you definitely won’t be able to say any more nasty things to him and maybe you’ll even make him laugh.
A person lives in society. Each of us is constantly or from time to time surrounded by other people, forced to contact them, deal with other people’s opinions and unpredictable reactions to some words and actions. Conflicts of interest are inevitable, which means that disputes and quarrels are inevitable.
How to behave correctly in this case? Making a noisy scandal is indecent and harmful to future relationships, often not only with your immediate opponent, but also with people around you who are not involved in the conflict. Among other things, an open outburst of aggression entails stress with all the negative consequences for health. However, hiding negative emotions and trying to ignore conflict can be even more dangerous. Unexpressed grievances and complaints tend to accumulate, which has a bad effect on the psycho-emotional state, and does not improve relationships between people.
The problem can be solved. There are ways to participate in a conflict situation that allow you to let off steam with minimal losses for both parties.
Source: depositphotos.com
Correct words
It is equally important to use the right words and phrases when solving any issue. Try to choose individual words and sentences carefully. Your goal in any disagreement should be the ability to ensure that further events occur in the direction you want. Therefore, it is worth thinking about the fact that insulting a person will lead to the opposite result, because an offended person will most likely do everything against you.
Your speech should be calm. Do not persistently prove that you are right and avoid using phrases that provoke a scandal in conversations. For example, very often phrases such as “there’s no point in talking to you,” “what an egoist you are,” or “you’re not good for anything” lead to a scandal. Try not to move away from the main topic of the conversation; you should not remember past grievances. Otherwise, everything will be intertwined and, as a result, the conversation will not lead to anything good.
Never mention third parties during an argument. Relatives and friends should not become the subject of a showdown. This is due to the fact that you will make peace, and the involved relatives will not be able to forgive you for this for a long time.
How to quarrel with a man? 6 rules for perfect conflict
Rule #1: Don't hurt the male ego
Male dignity is extremely vulnerable and very impressionable. But in the rush of mutual statements, outright battles often arise in order to find out who will outdo whom in words. The desire to prove why your opponent is wrong can be such a priority in a hot moment that we literally go to the most painful places of our loved one. “But your business never worked out, you always think you’re cool, but in reality it’s zero!” and other blows below the belt become even more offensive and treacherous for a man. After all, you, in fact, are his first and often only confidant in difficult times. Keep a tight rein on yourself during a quarrel, do not humiliate, drown or use moments of male weakness as an argument - this is betrayal!
Rule #2: Don't use big words
Never, even in a fit of the most serious despair, manipulate a saint and do not juggle with emotions! “If I knew you like that, I would have thought three hundred times before marrying you!”, “If you do this one more time, we’ll get a divorce!” and other female threats, spoken in the heat of the moment, have the opposite effect on men.
He doesn’t sense that you just wanted to reach his heart. He only hears reproaches, your regret about the marriage and thoughts of divorce. There will be no correction, because you have already decided everything. Well, there’s no point in trying if you’re already having such terrible thoughts!
Rule No. 3: don't hammer
No normal man can withstand the regime of a woodpecker woman. Learn to resolve conflicts in one day and solve any problem at a time, and not live with it for weeks and, at every opportunity, remember how he was very guilty “three days ago.”
Rule No. 4: don’t make a lump out of a thousand problems
A girl's favorite idea is to make a huge snowball out of several problems. Everything usually happens on emotions and spontaneously. They begin to discuss a specific problem together, and it suddenly dawns on the wife that this is deja vu, and her husband is not lucky in life - and a string of his bad traits begins to dangle into the proverbial lump. Learn to solve a current problem, and not remember old ones at every opportunity. He pasted the wallpaper askew and crookedly - which means he is only to blame for this, and not for the fact that in life his hands grow from the wrong place, and therefore he cannot even be trusted with children!
Rule #5: Don't comment on a fight in an epic way.
Every time during a quarrel, it’s not at all worth emphasizing your dissatisfaction with sweeping, large-scale comments: “Oh, it would be better if I didn’t ask you for anything!”, “It’s easier to do everything normally yourself!”, “You ruin everything your hands touch! » etc.
Otherwise, soon you will definitely come to a response with a click in the forehead: “Don’t ask! Do it yourself! What’s the question?!”
Rule No. 6: Don’t hush up your grievances
At the same time, hushing up your grievances, hiding them until “better times” in a woman’s piggy bank of pride, is also not the best solution. Firstly, it comes out sideways to you and is reflected in the outside world in the form of deflection. Deflection is a barrier mechanism in which you avoid direct contact with the problem, so you lash out over trifles. For example, you start to get angry with your children because of some little thing or withdraw into yourself. Secondly, psychosomatics is an extremely insidious thing. While you walk around hushing up grievances or unsaid words, this internal negativity can develop into poor health, and then even affect your health!
And finally, I would like to add a couple more golden rules for proper conflict resolution. Never go to bed without making peace! Don’t carry your nightmares into a new day and fall asleep in a bucket of tears. And most importantly, start a serious conversation only on a full man’s stomach, learn to switch a man in time in the heat of a quarrel - change the topic, hug him “at the wrong time” and discourage him. As a result of this behavior, the passion quickly fades away for both.
Alternative view
It is generally accepted, and this is literally imposed on our consciousness, that the Russian language contains many obscene words, so that one can even single out a special speech - Russian obscene, which is supposedly spoken by half of the population of our country. Russians are credited with extraordinary rudeness in their statements, without which, they say, neither the army, nor medicine, nor construction can do. Moreover, we see ourselves as sophisticated scolders, in contrast to civilized and cultured peoples, to whom we include everyone except ourselves.
However, the special rudeness and craving for obscenity among the Russian people is a delusion imposed from outside, and not at all our national trait, since the need for verbal insult exists among all nations and people, and this is a reflection and embodiment of the universal human need to take revenge on the offender, to take retribution on the enemy, punish with offensive speech. Each nation has developed its own forms of verbal revenge and punishment, although they sometimes do not seem to us Russians to be something truly offensive.
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So, for example, the Japanese, whose language contains practically no words that are offensive, from our point of view, offend their enemies by deliberately not using the grammatical category of politeness, so characteristic of the Japanese language. In Russian it would sound like this. Instead of a polite request: “Please open the window,” we would simply order: “Open the window,” to a person whom we cannot address on a personal level or who is not well known to us. Hindus and Kazakhs have retained a special way of insulting a relative: with the intention of offending, they call him simply by name, and not by his relationship status - daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, brother-in-law, daughter-in-law. It’s the same as if we suddenly called an elderly man whom we respect, whom everyone calls by his patronymic name “Vasily Ivanovich,” Vaska. For Germans, accusations of uncleanliness and sloppiness are extremely offensive. They also exist among us, when we call someone a pig or a pig, but for Russians this accusation is not too offensive. It turns out that verbal insult is a refutation of what is especially dear and important to the people: for the Japanese, the distance between people is important and they keep it with the help of the grammatical category of politeness. For an Indian or a Kazakh, family relationships are precious, and their destruction hurts them. The Germans are guardians of cleanliness and order, and they are offended by accusations of sloppiness. But all this does not seem particularly offensive or shameful to us. Our Russian forms of insult seem much more obscene and offensive to us. And this is all because it causes grief to Russians, that is, grief, and this is precisely the meaning of the word insult - to cause grief, painful insult, grief to a person - we are actually caused grief by completely different words that touch the strings of our national soul and make them tremble and cry. These words in us, Russians, evoke feelings of fear, disgrace and shame, because for us the concepts that are stained by insult are dear and sacred.
What does it mean to “swear at God the Mother”?
The most terrible insult for Russians is blasphemy, blasphemy against God, insulting the Mother of God and the saints, what was called “swearing at God the Mother.” Even in unbelieving people, this caused a feeling of internal trembling, instinctive fear of God and acted on a person as a strong blow, causing moral pain and shock. Blasphemy was severely punished in Rus'. In the first article of the Council Code of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, blasphemy was punishable by burning.
It is believed that thanks to such cruel measures, blasphemy has practically disappeared from Russian speech. But that's not true. It has acquired special forms, which are expressed by the word “cursing.” Blasphemy in Russian is the worship of the devil, and in living language the word devil is more often used in this meaning. Damn it, go to hell, the devil knows, the devil knows - all these are deliberate replacements of the Name of God with the name of the enemy of the human race, whom believers were and are wary of remembering. In the old days such blasphemy was rarely used. They caused the same horror as direct blasphemy against the Lord, for the mention of the name of the devil in the minds of the Russian people, as well as any people who have faith in God in their souls, called upon evil spirits to help in the same way as the mention of the name of God called for action and to the help of the Lord and his angels. That is why cursing was forbidden among pious people; it caused a shock to the soul, as did a direct reproach of God.
But in the modern Russian world, where there is almost no genuine religiosity, mentioning the devil has ceased to be a curse.
Since God and the Mother of God are no longer sacred for the majority of the people, blasphemy in the form of swearing, but essentially the worship of the devil and evil spirits, embodied in the images of the devil, the devil, the “damn mother” and the “damn grandmother”, has become a common figure of speech, expressing our irritation and annoyance. Promotional video:
The extent to which we have lost the fear of remembering the devil’s name can be seen in the blasphemous address to the devil that has become commonplace in the expression “The devil, what?” But before us is a question with which a person, renouncing God, seeks an answer and help from the devil. This phrase is essentially opposed to the expression “help, Lord,” “give, God,” “save, Lord.” It contains an appeal in the ancient vocative case “devil” and an interrogative pronoun “what”, placed here in anticipation of a response to the call of evil spirits. So, it turns out that we, believing swearing to be a simple outburst of irritation, are actually blaspheming, calling for our help and haste not God and his good forces, but the devil and demons, who have crept into our language under different names. Following the “damn what?” In our madness we multiply other questions to the demons: “Devil, how?” and “damn, how much?”, “damn, who?” and “damn, why?”... But all these are forms of communication with evil spirits, or, in other words, blasphemy.
Swearing "at all costs"
Another terrible type of insult is swearing, which in ancient times was called “obscene barking,” likening swear words and expressions to the barking of a dog. Swearing has its origins in the ancient worship of Russian people to the Mother Raw Earth, which, according to our primordial ideas, gave birth to us, carries us, feeds and waters us, clothes us, warms us, and after death gives the last shelter to our body. That is why there is an expression “to swear at all costs”, because the light stands and the world rests on Mother Earth. Mother Earth is an ancient shrine, which in the old days had to be touched by hand before a person got up from sleep, so the Earth was asked for permission to stand on it with their feet. It was prescribed to ask the Earth for permission to plow and sow, otherwise she, mother, would not give a good harvest. They swore an oath with it, eating a handful of earth, which in case of a lie or violation of the oath would form a lump in the throat. That is why we sometimes, without understanding for what purpose, say, assuring our interlocutor of the task we need: “If you want, I will eat the land.” Until now, the oath that is so necessary in human relationships is connected precisely with the earth. Because of this, we say, making a promise to “fall into the ground for me,” that is, in the event of a violation of our word or a deliberate lie, we doom ourselves not to rest in damp earth, but to fall into tartarars, into the underworld, into hell. The curse “so that you fall through the earth!”, which once caused righteous fear, has the same meaning.
Mother Earth in the Russian picture of the world is similar to her own mother in caring for her children, therefore swearing as an insult is addressed to the mother of the insulted person and at the same time to the earth that carries him. In our minds, defamation of a mother is a desecration of the womb that bore him and the native land that nurtured him, and such words, if the insulted person honors and loves his own mother, cause the same horror as the mention of the devil in a person who is deeply religious and sincerely believes in God . And although we have long forgotten the ancient rituals of worshiping Mother Raw Earth, for the most part we still love our mothers, and therefore our soul trembles and is indignant when swearing occurs, and is overwhelmed by a feeling of resentment.
Blasphemy and swearing are an insult to the two highest feelings in human nature - the sense of the sacred as our awareness of the holiness of our Creator in all His forms, and the sense of the sacred as an understanding of the place of our creation, the material from which we are created, this sacred is our own mother and her prototype - Mother Earth. The Lord, according to the conviction of all religious peoples, created us from the Earth (in the word create, the root zd means earth or clay). The earth is a place of power, a person lives and feeds on it in the physical sense of the word, and in the depths of his soul he certainly compares it with his own mother, who is sacred to us to the same extent. She gives birth to us, raises and nourishes us, and takes care of us until the end of our days. The sacred, like the sacred, obliges us to honor, reverence, and preserve ourselves from all desecration and desecration. And when a foul word is uttered through foul lips, accusing the insulted person’s own mother of unchastity or fornication, he experiences a feeling of shame and horror, which is inevitable when everything sacred is desecrated and desecrated. In Polesie there is still a belief that those who swear, the ground will burn under their feet for three years.
The veneration of the sacred Mother Earth was the strongest aspect of the pagan worldview. Our ancestors revered springs, sacred groves, holy mountains. They greeted the earth waking up in the spring, asked her permission to plow and sow, and thanked her for the harvest. Women rolled along the mown stubble, saying: “Nivka, Nivka, give me a snare”... Christianity did not develop this tradition, but it did not prevent the peasant from honoring Mother Earth as a nurse and benefactor. The sacred attitude towards the land was destroyed in cities where people did not depend on nature at all and relied only on the Lord and on themselves. And the last hundred years of persecution of the peasantry have finally eradicated the class that considered Mother Earth sacred. And then swearing ceased to be an insult for many. It has become the dirty speech of rude people.
So, blasphemy caused great fear in a person. It was the fear of inevitable revenge for the desecration of God's Name and for the calling of demons and devils. Swearing put a person into shock, causing him to feel terrible shame. Shame, as we know, having the same root as the words chill, chill, and in ancient times this word sounded like cold, was an image of a strong chill, a person gripped by shame seemed to himself unprotected, lonely and naked, since he was deprived of the main primordial protectors - Mother of the Raw Earth and native mother.
Defilement of flesh and spirit
There is another type of strong insult in Russian - foul language, the use of so-called bad words denoting sewage, excrement, human organs below the waist and its physical functions. This perception of foul language was based on an ancient attitude, through language, introducing the concepts of good and evil into our picture of the world: the top in this case meant good, the bottom meant evil, and in this system the human body was divided into good and evil halves by the border of the belt.
Human organs below the waist were, and still are, considered unclean. And the sages said this: “We are all half people, half beasts.”
A person who is insulted with nasty words, called uncleanness or the genital organ, the back part of the body, that is, shameful, obscene, vulgar words, experiences a feeling that in Russian is called the word shame. Shame occurs when a person is verbally or physically exposed in front of people, etymologically it means the feeling of horror that covers when exposing the forbidden. It is no coincidence that someone who shames someone or puts himself to shame is said to be arrogant, he mocks and is ostracized. And thus our language emphasizes that the filthiness of the flesh is naked, freed from the veil and exposed in all its uncleanness for everyone to see. However, today foul language is not perceived by everyone as obscene language. People who have lost the idea of the pure and impure of their own flesh also lose their squeamish attitude towards unclean words; truly, the defilement of the flesh gives birth to the defilement of the spirit, and the speech of a Russian person is increasingly filled with impurities.
So insult in Russian included three types of words that caused a kind of paralysis of the soul, severe shock, shock and offense - blasphemy, swearing and foul language. Blasphemy entailed a feeling of fear, swearing caused shame, and foul language gave rise to shame in a person. It was about these verbal insults that it was said that a word can kill. For such insulting words forced a person to freeze, as it were, experiencing grief, and in essence this word is paralysis of the soul, since grief comes from the concept of convulsing, that is, crouching and freezing in a crouched state. It is about insult that the Russian proverb says: “The word is not an arrow, but it strikes even more.”
This is not to say that people today do not understand this at all. But foul-mouthed people and foul-mouthed people have become so attached to dirty speech in their souls that even in a decent environment they find equivalents for them that directly refer others to an unclean meaning - numerous Christmas trees, Yoshka’s cats, Japanese policemen, pancakes, which nowadays seem to be cultured ladies and gentlemen, and even children do not shy away from them - they do not mislead anyone around them. They are a disgusting phenomenon of not only dirty speech, but also indicate the dirty way of thinking of those who utter such euphemisms.
Swearing - verbal defense
However, in addition to offensive words that lead to paralysis of the soul, there are swear words in the Russian language that serve a person’s benefit. After all, the word abuse itself means our verbal defense, in an effort to avoid physical confrontation with the enemy and get by with only words when expressing our aggression. As they said from time immemorial, “the birch tree is not a threat; where it stands, it makes noise.” Indeed, it is better to curse your enemy with a swear word than to crack his skull in the heat of the moment. This is how the warning worked: “If you scold, scold, but don’t give your hands free rein.”
Swear words or defensive words are quite different from offensive words. Swearing has traditionally been used as a form of warning the enemy that he will be attacked if he does not humble himself and surrender. This is the custom of the Russian people. We do not attack the enemy from behind, as the steppe peoples do. We do not rush at the enemy suddenly, without warning, as is customary among our mountaineer neighbors. Russians are in the habit of warning the enemy about an attack, and in this warning we, as a rule, insert ritual words of vilification of the enemy - that same Russian abuse. The famous message of Prince Svyatoslav “I’m coming to you,” which so surprised his opponents, is an example of a Russian warning to adversaries about an impending battle. The generosity of the Slavic warrior here was usually accompanied by ritual threats to the enemy, which did not so much demoralize the enemy as encourage the scolder himself.
Indeed, the use of verbal abuse originates from the ancient military ritual of humiliating one’s enemy before battle. Such rituals strengthened the fighters' sense of superiority over the enemy. The ritual of swearing was so obligatory in Russian everyday culture that there is a well-known saying on this score, coming from the spectators interested in the fight: “It’s enough to swear, isn’t it time to fight.”
The most important thing in such rituals is to rename the enemy from a person to an animal, and to an animal that is easy to defeat. Non-fearful, non-dangerous animals and cattle - goat, ram, donkey, pig, fox, dog - became the name of the opponents of the Russian warrior. They were used depending on what would hurt the enemy more - the sloppiness of a pig, the stupidity of a ram, the stubbornness of a donkey or the harmfulness of a goat... But the names of predators - the wolf and the bear, the confrontation with which did not promise an easy victory - were never used in warfare. In defense warfare, animals were remembered in a collective sense: creature or beast - also universal renamings before a fight. With the exclamation “Oh, you brute!” or “Wow, you creature!” It’s customary for us to rush into hand-to-hand combat.
The renaming of man into cattle was important for the Russian also because the Russian, kind by nature, was not ready to kill his own kind even in open battle. He needed not only to rename his opponent an animal, but also to convince himself that he saw the enemy in front of him not in human form, but in the guise of an animal. For, as Vladimir Vysotsky wrote, “I have not been able to hit a person in the face since childhood.” And so, in order not to hit a person in the face, this face was renamed in Russian into an animal image: this is how abusive threats were born - to punch him in the face, punch him in the snout, clean his face, tear his mouth, hit him in the mug, break his mug. All the words listed here are the essence of naming an animal face - an inhuman appearance. By thus humiliating the enemy with his threat, a person prepared for battle or a fight freed himself from remorse for raising his hand against a person. The enemy became like a beast for him.
There is another way of renaming the enemy before a fight in verbal defense. To justify his aggression, the fighter called the enemy by the name of a stranger, a person from a foreign clan and tribe hostile to us. Russian history has accumulated many such nicknames, imprinted in the memory of the language thanks to many invasions and wars. From the Turkic languages came to us the dunce (from the Tatar bilmas - “he does not know”), the blockhead (Tatar hero), the fool and the badma. This is a memory of the Mongol-Tatar yoke and the subsequent hostile neighborhood with the steppes. The war with Napoleon was reflected in the words sharomyzhnik (French cher ami - “dear friend”) and trash (French chevalier). These words have survived a complex history. They arose as a result of the superposition of ancient Russian roots and French borrowings. It was with the support of the Russian root in the word shushval (a scrap, scrap, flap) that the word chevalier, denoting a French enemy, was re-interpreted. This is how trash arose - the name of any worthless person, good for nothing. The French cher ami - dear friend was also reinterpreted in our language with the help of the Russian root - shara (emptiness, darmovschina), shara, na sharu, (for nothing) in conjunction with the suffix -yg-, known in the words skvalyga, zabuldyga, rogue. Sharomyga, sharomyzhnik, thus became ironic nicknames for a beggar and a nonentity. By the way, the word binge has a similar formation. The Tatar root bulda (“enough is enough”) is used here, and a drunkard means a drunkard who does not have the concept of “enough,” that is, the ability to stop in time from drunken drinking. Let us also remember here the shalopaya: borrowed from the French language chenapan (scoundrel) was transformed into the word shalopay under the influence of the Russian shalun, naughty, and began to mean an ordinary slacker.
Newer swear words for outsiders are the Greek idiot (special, different, alien) and the French cretin (stupid). For our language, they are also a sign of a person’s inferiority, his alienation to his native community, which allows us to use these words in verbal defense, removing the idiot and cretin from his circle.
Let's name another strategy of verbal defense, which was used by the Russian warrior and every Russian who was ready for a fight. In this strategy, it is very important to warn your opponent that he will be defeated and destroyed. This is why words denoting carrion and carrion are used. These are the words: bastard and bitch, scum and bastard, bastard and infection. Each of them expresses the idea of the dead in a special way. If a carrion is something that fell dead to the ground, ordinary carrion, then a bitch is a torn creature. It is no coincidence that in dialects a bear is called a stervets, which means tormenting prey. The vulture is also memorable - a bird of prey that feeds on carrion, tearing it to pieces. They call an enemy scum, comparing him to a creature frozen to death, and so is a scoundrel. In the word bastard there is a comparison with dead leaves piled up in a heap, useless garbage, as Vladimir Dal believed. And the word infection comes from the verb to infect (that is, to infect, kill), and means infection of someone killed in battle.
So, verbal abuse is a real defense strategy, warning the enemy of an attack, humiliating the enemy and at the same time strengthening the fighter himself before the fight. This is the history of the origin of swear words. But even today, swearing is acceptable and sometimes even necessary in speech. After all, it can be used to completely throw out resentment on the enemy, settle the conflict with just one squabble and avoid assault.
Swearing - sorting out relationships with neighbors
The Russian stock of offensive sayings is not exhausted with insulting and abusive words. The most important part of national life is swearing - verbal humiliation of our neighbors when expressing dissatisfaction with them and during the so-called “showdown”.
In the Russian tradition of communication, which developed over thousands of years, the sincerity and openness of a person in interaction with his neighbors was especially valued. That is why we consider the ideal of communication to be a heart-to-heart conversation, without which a Russian person shrinks in his own cocoon and dries up his soul. But we also really value the other side of a heart-to-heart conversation—a sincere expression of dissatisfaction with one’s neighbors—and call it a “showdown.” Such communication is a heart-to-heart conversation inside out, it is accumulated grievances splashed out in the face, it is anger concentrated in a dirty word with which we call a relative or friend who has offended us. In Russian proverbs, such scolders are aptly compared to a dog, which has a changeable temperament, from ferocity to affection: “Bark, bark, dog, and lick your lips.”
Swear words, which in our language “sort things out,” are very diverse and colorful, since a person, when swearing, strives to express himself as clearly as possible, but at the same time not to insult, defeat, or throw mud at him. In the selection of expressions, the scolder, as a rule, proceeds from the attitude that his irritant is, as it were, not a person at all, he is some kind of empty place that does not have the main sign of a person - a living soul.
Such, for example, is the word fool, the etymology of which is based on the concept of hole - empty space. Moreover, when swearing, we like to emphasize that a fool is crazy, headless, stupid. And to the fool we add stupidity, we assert that the fool’s roof has fallen off, his attic is without a top. Fools are called in different ways, refreshing the power of swearing with the novelty of the form: here are the affectionate fool, the irritated fool, the good-natured fool, the angry fool, and just the banal fool with the fool, as well as the fool and the fool. Stable definitions of a fool add sonority - a fool can be round, stuffed, inveterate. And if a fool is not really a fool or pretends to be one, then there are also names for this - half-fool and idiot.
Another abusive name for a neighbor as a soulless object denotes different types of wood - here is a log, often it looks like a “chock with eyes” or “a log with ears”, and a log, and a log, and a log, and an oak with a club and a blockhead, and for brightness the club is called stoeros, that is, not lying, but standing, like a person. A tall and stupid person will also be called an oryashina - a long pole or twig. This is how good fellows are scolded. Let us remember the stump, to which they add that it is old or mossy, this is how old people are reproached. Similar to the idea of a wooden man is the word dunce; from ancient times it meant a wooden post and has the same root. Another wooden object reinterpreted as a curse word is the shaft. Modern language adds bamboo and baobab to this list, and when we knock on a piece of wood, we say, with a sense of superiority over the stupid person, “hello, tree!”
Curses involving calling neighbors shoes are also entertaining. Thus, we emphasize that what we have before us is not a person, but only his shell without content - that is, again without a soul. And in such expressions we select shoes that correspond to the social status of the person we scold. A boot - let's say about a stupid military man, a bast shoe and a felt boot we will call a simpleton - a village resident, a wife will sneeze with a slipper from her own weak-willed husband, and he will use a slipper to sneeze his stupid wife, but in any case, we speak out in the sense that before us is a naked emptiness, a meaningless object .
The thought of one’s worthlessness and uselessness is offensive to a person, and scolders take advantage of this with pleasure. The Russian language has accumulated a collection of useless words used in swearing. Here there is the usual rubbish with garbage in addition, and more specific rags - torn clothes, and scraps - old shoes, as well as rabble - unnecessary rubbish and garbage. There are funny rarities in such swearing, but also worthless - oshurok (dried snot), shushval (scrap, shred). The word ragamuffin stands apart here; it also means a worthless ragamuffin, and the sound similarity between a ragamuffin and a ragamuffin seems to be traceable. However, in confusion there was a Russian rethinking of the German Ubermut (hooligan, pretentious, naughty). The coincidence of the sounds of a moron with a ragamuffin and a spendthrift gave impetus to the development of a different meaning - a worthless reveler, squandered to the last rag. This is exactly how the word ohlamon was formed at the end of the 19th century; it initially correlated with the Greek ohlos (people) and literally meant “a man of the people.” But the striking coincidence of the sound of this word with the root trash gave rise to a new meaning - poorly dressed, slob.
Swearing addressed to loved ones is also characterized by calling them animals, primarily characterized by stupidity, harmfulness or worthlessness. A husband can call his wife a sheep, a goat or a chicken, and in retaliation she can call him a goat or a ram. A mischievous and capricious old man is called an old hag (the word grich is preserved in the Czech language and means old dog), and a grumpy old woman is called an old hag (the word hag is preserved in Sanskrit to mean raven).
An important sign of intra-family swearing was the naming of one's neighbors with names of alien origin - dunduk (worthless, stupid) comes from a Turkic personal name, ooluk (stupid, sloppy) comes from the Finnish personal name Oliska, pentyukh (clumsy, dull) arose as a result of a reinterpretation of the Greek name (Panteley - Pantyukha - pentyukh) when the sounds coincide with the expressive stump.
Let us pay attention to how large the number of such curses is - harmless, because they are not offensive, like blasphemy, obscenity and foul language, and do not threaten anyone, like verbal abuse. In such everyday swearing, each of us relieves nervous tension, irritation, which is usually caused by difficult life circumstances or fatigue at work - “without swearing, you won’t get things done,” “without noise, the mash won’t turn sour.” Here it is - the true purpose of Russian swearing - “to quarrel - to take your soul away,” which means to return to a calm state and effectively bring the matter to the end.
When we swear at our own family and friends, then there is great merit in such swearing. Psychological release occurs when a person uses all these funny names - boobies, dunduks, oryasins and oshurkas, lumps and felt boots. For example, you call your slothful son a telep and you yourself burst into laughter, imagining him in the form of a clumsy lump, scurrying back and forth uselessly. Or the wife in her hearts will shout to her husband: “Well, why did you stand up like a fool!”, and he will answer her: “Completely lost, sheep!” And it’s funny, and not offensive, but instructive. That’s why they say in Rus': “They fight more, they live more quietly,” “when they’re happy, they fight, when they’re in trouble,” “they fight their own dogs, don’t bother someone else’s.”
Psychologists have studied people's need for verbal release and found that when a person, out of fear, or due to good upbringing, or for some other reason, is unable to express his negative feelings, his mind becomes clouded, he begins to quietly hate those around him, and may not not only go crazy, but also commit a crime or commit suicide. This state is called in Russian: “there is not enough evil.” There should be plenty of “evil” in verbal abuse, because this is the most harmless form of punishment or retribution for our neighbor who annoys us. After which peace and tranquility sets in for both. That’s why we all know: “swearing is not smoke, it doesn’t eat your eyes,” “swearing doesn’t hang on your neck,” and, most importantly, “without beating your godfather, don’t drink beer.”
So why, one might ask, have we forgotten so many such well-aimed, sonorous, precise swear words, and instead of them, like a blow to the head, we cover our near and distant ones with choice obscenities, curse at them and use foul language, while losing fear and shame and exposing showing off your own shame?
Maybe this is happening because we have long lived in a society where people have stopped worshiping God and His Most Pure Mother? And therefore, blaspheming Them – swearing “at God the Mother” – is not something terrible for many? Maybe cursing is in use because all these hundred years, or even more, the devil has ceased to be considered an enemy of the human race? This means that entering into open communication with him, swearing, is also no longer scary? And after all, these same hundred years, during which we so quickly forgot God and came to know the devil, people in our country stopped worshiping Mother Earth and neglected the holiness of motherhood in general. So swearing did not cause shame, first in the face of his native land, then in the face of his own mother, and, finally, in the eyes of his own children. As for foul language, its impurity is no longer perceived as a shame, for people are accustomed not only to speaking dirty, but also to thinking dirty. The whole point is that we, as a majority of people, get used to thinking dirty, or even not thinking at all, we use foul language and swearing as a reflex of discontent and indignation... When there are gaps in thoughts and memory, as neurolinguists have established, people fill in the gaps speech with swearing, cursing and foul language. There is even a mental illness in which a person completely lacks speech, but in order to attract the attention of others, the patient spews foul language and swearing. So people who swear for no reason and habitually use foul language are akin to mentally ill people and should be perceived as such in society.
So, the belief imposed in Russia today that Russians are some kind of particularly sophisticated foul-mouthed people who do not drink, do not eat, and generally do not live in the world without swearing, is deceit or delusion. Blasphemy, obscenity and foul language a hundred years ago were considered unacceptable not only among the educated community, but also among the common people. These words carried open evil, were dangerous for society and people, they were avoided, and they were severely punished for them. Another thing is swear words and swearing, which turned out to be an aid in sincere communication with neighbors and a way to prevent assault. Here the apt Russian word serves a useful service to this day. This does not mean, of course, that we have the right to set fire to family and friends from morning to night, but it does mean that we must protect ourselves and everyone around us from insults and foul language.
Author: Tatyana Mironova
