De-Etymologization

De-Etymologization

 

a change in the morphological structure of a word when the etymological connection between the word and its simple stem is lost in the consciousness of the speakers of a language. De-etymologization occurs either when a word’s original primary stem ceases to exist in a language (vazhnyi, “important,” and the Old Russian vaga, “weight”), or when a given word’s semantic development goes far beyond the meaning of the word having the same simple stem (krupnyi, “large,” and krupa, “groats”).

REFERENCE

Bulakhovskii, L. A. Deetimologizatsiia v russkom iazyke. In the collection Trudy In-ta russkogo iazyka AN SSSR, vol. 1. Moscow, 1949.

R. A. AGEEVA