Language never stands still. He, as a living organism, obeys the laws of relentless development. Some of its layers are significantly modified, some are replaced by new ones. Certainly, this process is influenced by the development of society (changes in the social structure, hierarchy), and progress in science and technology.
It is no coincidence that in connection with the development of the Internet and computerization, a huge number of new words are being introduced into the language - neologisms, sometimes barbarisms (that is, tokens not yet fully mastered, often differing in foreign language spelling). Whereas obsolete words and concepts are a thing of the past. But they do not disappear completely, because this process is slow. And while there are people who know what, say, the word "Komsomol" or "rabfak" means, or works of art that use outdated words (often requiring explanation for the modern reader in the form of comments, footnotes, additions), they will not die at all. Leading tokens are usually divided into archaisms and historicisms. The latter are words denoting obsolete phenomena and concepts, things.
For example, “Armenian”, “caftan”, “tarantas”, “clerk” - today there is already no such type of clothing, vehicle, or position. No serfs and boyars. Therefore, these are historicisms. But then what is archaism? This is a disused word that denotes an existing phenomenon, concept, object. “Lanites” - the same as cheeks, “fingers” - fingers, “howl” - neck. But we do not say that. In order to better understand what archaism is and what its role is in language and literature, let us analyze what its types are.
For a number of words, neither the meaning nor the spelling has changed, but they are pronounced differently in modern speech. For example, "music", "symbol". Indeed, in the 19th century the emphasis was put not where it is now: they said "music", "symbol". These are phonetically obsolete words. And what is semantic archaism? This is a word that has one or more meanings out of date. For example, "not sparing his stomach." We are not talking about a specific part of the body. This word used to mean life.
Or "villain" - once this word was not a curse, a curse, but pointed to a person unsuitable for military service. That is, the word remains, but it is used now in a completely different context, with a different meaning.
What is archaism lexical or lexico-derivational? For example, who is the “thief” in the phrase “like a thief in the night”? Once this word meant "thief", now it is used only as part of this idiom, and then it is extremely rare. Thieves exist, but the token is out of date. But, for example, “friendship” instead of “friendship”, “fish” instead of “fisherman” are quite understandable to us, since only the suffixes have changed. These are the lexico-derivational archaisms of Russian. We understand that “dol” is “valley”, “ask” - “ask, ” but comments like “food” (dishes, food) or “the other day” (the day before) are already needed. Nevertheless, archaisms, obsolete words (including historicisms), help the writer to recreate the flavor of the era. Thus, they play a stylistic role, especially if used in speech or works of contemporaries. Names (for example, the program "The Day" or the word "homestead" often used recently in names) often help to understand what archaism is, and phraseological units in which obsolete elements are present ("seven spans in the forehead" - from " span "is a measure of length). To understand the meaning of such a name or idiom, we need to turn to a special dictionary (for example, obsolete words and expressions).
