Russian Borrowings in English: Similarities and Differences in Lexicographic Description

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Russian Borrowings in English: Similarities and Differences in Lexicographic Description 1. Introduction The study of word origins enjoyed considerable popularity in the past, and etymologies, a traditional component of a dictionary entry, were often hotly debated, even though ‘the amateurs who, as late as 1900, filled the pages of popular journals with their conjectures on word origins, had no idea that they should have used their time reading rather than writing’ (Liberman 2005: 158). To contemporary dictionary users etymology sections seem to have less appeal. According to surveys carried out by Barnhart and Quirk, what is usually searched for is information on the meaning of words, their spelling, pronunciation and usage (qtd. in Hartmann 1987: 125). In response to the potential needs of users, general monolingual dictionaries do include brief etymologies, but more extensive references have been confined almost exclusively to etymological and historical dictionaries, on the assumption that they can engage the attention of scholars and students of the history of English only. Word histories are, however, of great interest to metalexicographers, or lexicographic researchers, who study various aspects of dictionaries and the dictionary-making process. The present paper focuses on one area for which etymological references are vital: foreign elements in the English lexicon. More precisely, I look at Russian borrowings recorded in dictionaries of English, and focus on similarities and differences in their lexicographic description. As the term ‘borrowing’ refers to different types of lexical importations—loanwords, calques, loanblends and semantic borrowings (Haugen 1950: 214– 215)—it is important to highlight that this paper covers only loanwords proper, i.e., narrowly interpreted Russian borrowings. 2. A History of Russianisms in English Anyone interested
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