Phraseologism "from rags to riches"

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-17 12:36

The topic of this article is the well-known idiom "from rags to riches". Where did he come from? Dahl's dictionary contains its primary form - a proverb known in the 19th century, which includes words discarded by subsequent condensation. At first they used to say: “Taken from the dirt”, and then they added: “… planted in riches.” The basis of phraseology is, as you understand, a metaphor that implies an abrupt change in the position of a person in society due to rapid enrichment. What is the metaphor? On the one hand, the initial state is correlated - poverty with dirt, on the other - a higher social level, which is most often associated with we alth, that is, with the status of a prince. It is speed that is meant when correlating two opposite concepts with the help of rhyme, which gives the overall dynamics to the phraseological unit “from rags to riches”.

Origin

When did the proverb appear? It is obvious that in Ancient Russia the phrase "from rags to riches" could not have arisen. The title was passed down from father to son. Neither the boyars nor the nobles (who arose as a narrow sociallayer of the military under the prince in the XII century). The situation did not change in the 16th century, under Tsar John IV (Ivan the Terrible), when the nobles became equal in rights with the boyars. The principle “swayed” in the 17th century, during the reign of the second tsar from the Romanov dynasty, Alexei Mikhailovich, who abundantly elevated various nobles to princely titles, exceeding the number of “gifted princes” over the original ones. However, the real “turning point” came in the 18th century, when the reformer tsar Peter I introduced the practice of awarding the princely title for services “to the Tsar and the Fatherland.” The first person bestowed with the title of prince is Menshikov, “a minion of happiness, rootless,” as A. S. Pushkin wrote about him. A worthy man, no doubt. But isn't the poet's phrase itself an analogue of "from rags to riches"? The text is essentially the same. It was the “granted princes”, whose number many times exceeded the original ones, later, in the 19th century, served as the basis for the creation of this derogatory phraseological unit.

Modern context

How is the phrase "rags to riches" used today? In the virtual 21st century, mainly due to crises (which, as you know, in the context of the Chinese language, have the meaning of “opportunities”), individuals quickly became rich, nouveau riche. Some of them, having not learned how to make other people happy, have acquired reflexes, “how to pull on themselves” a money pie. Here we should clarify specifically for readers that we are not talking about those we althy people who perceive personal we alth as an opportunity to invest in society,and relationships with other people as cooperation. Those, as they say, God gave we alth. Thus, the essence of the proverb today is the emphasis on the broken harmony between the material status and the intellectual, spiritual world of a we althy person. Often, a synonymous phraseological unit for him will be "a crow in peacock feathers." The proverb is in demand in fiction. "If you are not in this world, or From rags to riches" - a book with this title came out from the pen of Marina Rybitskaya and Yulia Slavachevsky.