FROM HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN WORDS: Pryakha’ [a Spinner], ‘Tkachikha’ [a Weaver] and ‘Skatert’-samobranka’ [a Magic Table-Cloth]

This article presents a spinning and weaving vocabulary based on the material of the historical Russian language dictionaries and on the ancient manuscripts containing colloquial and business lexis. It describes two large groups of words connected with the designation of the actions ‘pryast’’ [to spin] and ‘tkat’’ [to weave]. They comprise not only cognate words like ‘pryast’’ [to spin],‘pryakha’ [a spinner], ‘pryalka’ [a spinning wheel], ‘pryazha’ [yarn], ‘pryadilshchik’’ [a male spinner] (the first group), and ‘tkat’’ [to weave], ‘tkan’’ [cloth], ‘tkach’ [a male weaver], ‘tkachikha’ [a female weaver] (the second group), but also other purpose-specific lexis. Special attention is placed on the fact that these two groups include the names of persons (‘pryakha’ [a spinner], ‘pryadeya’ and ‘pryaljya’ which are both obsolete words meaning [a spinner], ‘pryadilshchik’ [a male spinner],‘tkach’ [a male weaver],‘tkachikha’ [a female weaver], ‘tkaljya’which is an obsolete word meaning [a female weaver],‘tkatel’’which is an obsolete word meaning [a male weaver],etc.), names of materials (‘lyon’ [flax], ‘konoplya’ [hemp], ‘kudel’’ [tow], etc.), labor actions and processes associated with their processing (‘terebit’’ [to pull], ‘myat’’ [to break], ‘trepat’’ [to skutch], ‘suchit’’ [to twist], etc.), as well as the processing waste (‘kostrika’ [chaff], ‘otryopki’ [hurds], ‘paklya’ [rug skutching], etc.), instruments of labor (‘myalka’ [a breaker], ‘pryalka’ [a spinning wheel], ‘vereteno’ [a spindle], ‘stan’ [a body], etc.), products of labor (‘pryazha’ [yarn], ‘polotno’[canvas], ‘poskon’’ [hemp cloth], etc.). This article analyzes the origin of these words and their subject orientation. Having compared the functioning of the terms of spinning and weaving production in the Russian literature records with the colloquial and slangy lexemes associated with them in modern speech communication, we came to a conclusion that the latter acquired purely attitudinal meaning.