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I understand the meaning. "No brainer": the origin of phraseology

I understand the meaning. "No brainer": the origin of phraseology

03.03.2019

Where does it originate funny expression"no brainer"? It is probably clear to all of you what meaning this expression carries. In simple words, it means something simple, clear, not requiring unnecessary explanation, elementary. However, few people know the history of the origin of the expression. Who coined and first uttered this phrase?

Clearly even a hedgehog -

This Petya was a bourgeois.

Comparison with a hedgehog, as it is assumed, Mayakovsky in this poem needed only for rhyme. The poem was published in 1925, but initially the expression remained only part of the poem. It went to the people after it appeared in the work of the Strugatsky brothers “The Land of Crimson Clouds”. The book turned out to be very successful, and the expression from Mayakovsky's poem went to the people, became popular in colloquial speech as a "catchword".

However, not everyone agrees with this version of the origin of the expression. There is also another version.

According to the second version, it appeared during the Soviet era in boarding schools. In such schools, there were groups to which letters were assigned depending on the complexity of the program. So, for example, letters from "A" to "D" were assigned to classes with a complicated curriculum, but letters such as "E", "F" and "I" were assigned to classes with a standard program. Such classes began to be called simply "Hedgehogs", that is, classes that study the simplest programs. Hence the expression "and hedgehogs understand."

It is not known for certain where exactly the “no brainer” came from, however most of researchers agree that the first option is the source of this funny expression.

These expressions are familiar to us from childhood, but where did they come from?

Eat clear!

“And it’s a no-brainer” - this expression became famous thanks to Mayakovsky’s poem (“It’s clear even to a hedgehog - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It appeared in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (grades A, B, C, D, E) or one year (grades E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, two-year students were already ahead of them in a non-standard program, so at the beginning school year the expression "no brainer" was very relevant.

rub glasses

In the 19th century, gamblers resorted to tricks: during the game, with the help of a special adhesive composition, they applied additional points (red or black signs) from powder to the cards, and if necessary, they could erase these points. This is where the expression "to rub glasses" comes from, meaning to present something in a favorable light.

whipping boy

Whipping boys in England and others European countries XV - XVIII centuries called boys who were brought up with princes and received corporal punishment for the faults of the prince. The effectiveness of this method was no worse than the direct flogging of the culprit, since the prince did not have the opportunity to play with other children, except for the boy, with whom he had a strong emotional connection.

Tutelka in tyutelka

Tyutelka is a diminutive of the dialectal tyutya ("hit, hit") name exact hit with an ax in the same place during carpentry work. Today, to denote high accuracy, the expression "tutelka in tyutelka" is used.

Nick down

Previously, the nose was called not only a part of the face, but also a tag that they carried with them and on which they put notches to account for work, debts, etc. Thanks to this, the expression "hack on the nose" arose.

In another sense, a bribe, an offering, was called a nose. The expression "to stay with the nose" meant to leave with an unaccepted offering, without an agreement.

play on nerves

After the ancient doctors discovered the nerves in the human body, they named them after their resemblance to strings. musical instruments the same word - nervus. From this came the expression for annoying actions - "play on the nerves."

Not at ease

Today in French V Everyday life the word assiette means "plate". However, earlier, no later than in the XIV century, it meant "the seating of guests, their location at the table, that is, near the plates." Then, with the expansion of the circle of connections, assiette became "the location of the military camp" and then the city. In the 17th century the word absorbed all the “concretenesses” of possible “positions” and began to denote any “position” in general ... In the same century, assiette also appeared figurative sense- “state of mind”.

Russian bars, who spoke and even thought in French, apparently did not really care about the accuracy of the Russian language, and even in the 18th century. they “translated” the French phrase in their own way: instead of “position”, the Russian phraseological unit got into the Russian phraseological unit from the original language ... “not one’s own plate”. It is thanks to their negligence that such a beautiful figurative expression appeared in the Russian language!

Pour in the first number

In the old days, schoolchildren were often flogged, often without any fault of the punished. If the mentor showed particular zeal, and the student got hit especially hard, he could be released from further vices in the current month, up to the first day of the next month.

Orphan Kazan

After the capture of Kazan, Ivan the Terrible, wanting to bind the local aristocracy to himself, rewarded high-ranking Tatars who voluntarily came to him. Many of them, in order to receive rich gifts, pretended to be heavily affected by the war. This is where the expression "Kazan orphan" came from.

Pass through the red thread

By order of the English Admiralty, since 1776, in the production of ropes for the navy, a red thread must be woven into them so that it cannot be removed even from a small piece of rope. Apparently, this measure was intended to reduce the theft of ropes. This is where the expression "pass like a red thread" comes from. main idea author throughout literary work, and Goethe was the first to use it in the novel "Elective Affinity".

give the go-ahead

In the pre-revolutionary alphabet, the letter D was called "good". The flag corresponding to this letter in the code of signals of the navy has the meaning "yes, I agree, I allow." This is what led to the emergence of the expression "give good."

Beluga roar

Beluga whale

The silent beluga fish has nothing to do with the expression "beluga roar", which means screaming loudly and strongly, crying. Previously, beluga was called not only fish, but also a toothed whale, which today is known to us as a beluga whale and is distinguished by a loud roar.

Blue blood

Spanish The Royal Family and the nobility were proud that, unlike common people, they trace their ancestry to the West Goths and never mixed with the Moors who entered Spain from Africa. Unlike the dark-skinned commoners, blue veins stood out on the pale skin of the upper class, and therefore they called themselves sangre azul, which means " blue blood". Hence this expression for the designation of the aristocracy has penetrated into many European languages, including Russian.

Get to the handle

IN Ancient Rus' kalachi were baked in the shape of a castle with a round bow. Citizens often bought kalachi and ate them right on the street, holding this bow, or handle. For reasons of hygiene, the pen itself was not used for food, but was given to the poor or thrown to be eaten by dogs. According to one version, they said about those who did not disdain to eat it: it reached the handle. And today the expression “to reach the handle” means to completely sink, to lose human appearance.

Spreading thought along the tree

In the “Tale of Igor's Campaign” one can find the lines: “Boyan the prophetic, if someone wanted to compose a song, his mind spread over the tree, gray wolf on the ground, like a gray eagle under the clouds. Translated from Old Russian, "mys" is a squirrel. And because of a mistranslation, in some editions of the Lay, a playful expression appeared, “to spread thought along the tree,” which means to go into unnecessary details, to be distracted from the main idea.

Skeleton in the closet

"Skeleton in the closet" - English expression, meaning a certain hidden fact of the biography (personal, family, corporate, etc.), which, if made public, can cause significant damage to reputation.

The appearance of the expression is associated with medicine. Doctors in Britain were not allowed to work on dead bodies until 1832. And the only bodies available for autopsy for medical purposes were those of executed criminals. Although the execution of criminals was by no means uncommon in 18th-century Britain, it was unlikely that a particular physician would have many corpses at his disposal for his work biography. For this reason, it was common practice for a doctor, who had the good fortune to dissect the corpse of an executed criminal, to keep the skeleton for research purposes. Public opinion at the same time, it did not allow doctors to keep the skeletons in sight, so they were forced to keep them away from prying eyes. For this reason, many suspected that doctors kept skeletons somewhere, and one of these places could be a closet.

Winged words are used in speech as a whole, without reference to the context where they originated. Therefore, it is so easy to lose the thread of the etymology of such expressions. So that another phrase does not add to the list of idioms of unknown origin, let's analyze where the expression "and a no brainer" came from and what it means.

Lexical meaning

All palette meanings of this phrase can be reduced to the following:

A position that does not require proof, an axiom;
Information that is a shame not to know, because even animals know it;
An indisputable fact that does not cause any doubts.

The expression is used mainly in colloquial speech or literary text, stylized as folk speech. Used live, it can be an insult in a certain context. Most often, it is pronounced when the interlocutor's speech is interrupted (which in itself is tactless), trying to point out a well-known fact to everyone.

As for the origin of the idiom, it is reliably known, unlike a significant number of others. popular expressions. This is explained by the comparative "freshness" of his appearance: he was not even a hundred years old.

Thanks to this, it is possible to trace the history of its gradual distribution with a certain degree of accuracy. Let's look at the etymology in more detail.

"No brainer": the origin of phraseology

Linguists salute the invention of this unusual phrase to the great Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. It was first recorded in the 1925 poem "The Tale of Petya, the Fat Child".

The plot of this work can be summarized as follows:

The story is preceded by a popular counting rhyme in those years;
Immediately after this, the author describes the character traits of Petya's father - a bourgeois to the marrow of his bones; Mayakovsky does not skimp on epithets and with broad strokes draws a most unpleasant, stingy and sanctimonious personality;
In defiance of the previous image of the villain-merchant, Sima's father, a hardworking and disinterested blacksmith, is presented;
The poet sees the reason for this state of affairs in the existence of merchants themselves, which is disastrous for society;
In the end, bad guys their fate is overtaken. Petya, an unbearable glutton, literally explodes from overeating.

With this poem, Mayakovsky hit the point of the then popular aspirations. In addition, the verse is known for a number of linguistic finds of the poet. So, on lines 44-45, the famous “ clear even a hedgehog', which has been widely used.

Mental abilities of hedgehogs

One can explain the proletarian poet's hatred of businessmen. However, it is not entirely clear what the hedgehogs annoyed him with. But in fact, the animal can be called, if not smart, then certainly quick-witted:

Relatively quickly, they learn to follow the light beam of a flashlight leading to food;
There are cases when, being locked, the hedgehog manages to free itself thanks to its ingenuity;
On a rugged terrain, they move at high speed, even if they see it for the first time;
Their memory is also good: once they stumble upon an obstacle in the enclosure, they bypass it;
These animals also quickly get used to man-made houses.

It is very important for these needle-scarred animals to have a close emotional connection with their owner. You should accustom him to your smell and tone of voice. Then the process of teaching the pet new skills go where faster.

These animals seem "stupid" only in inept hands.

What other animals do people think are stupid?

Sometimes it is truly difficult to determine for what reason popular rumor ascribes supernatural intellectual abilities to some representatives of the fauna. The owl, the cat, and even the "wise" gudgeon take pride of place in literature and poetry. However, some animals are extremely undeservedly offended by the authors of many eras.

In addition to the aforementioned owner of needles, it is necessary to mention:

Donkey;
Ram;
Sheep;
Wolf;
Pig;
Sometimes a bear.

In rare cases, these stereotypes have some real justification in the form of observations. Most often, there were no grounds for such ideas, with the exception of only an emotional attitude towards this or that animal.

In some cases, people have mistaken ordinary instincts for logical or good behavior (or vice versa). Sometimes they found the features of the muzzle or the figure of the beast sophisticated or ridiculous.

How did the expression "no brainer" come about?

After the great Mayakovsky drew a new phraseological unit from the depths of his bottomless mind to the public, several decades passed. But if he had circulation, then it was very limited - most often in an educated environment familiar with the work of the poet.

And only in the second half of the 20th century did the idiom become truly popular. This happened in several stages:

In 1958, the Strugatsky brothers, the fathers of Soviet science fiction, wrote the book The Land of Crimson Clouds. It was mentioned in passing famous expression Mayakovsky. Since the Strugatskys then read everything from young to old, they did not have to make significant efforts to popularize their novel. So millions of Soviet and foreign readers learned about the stupidity of the hedgehog;
"Hedgehogs" in the USSR were called such students in special schools with in-depth physical and mathematical training, who studied according to a more sparing program compared to the rest. Therefore, even as pupils of prestigious specialized institutions, they were considered “backward” by their sharp-tongued classmates. From schools offensive nicknames flowed to universities - at first prestigious, then to almost every university in the country;
Today, the phrase is very common. It is widely used in live communication between people, without any reference to literary works or the subculture of boarding schools.

Everyone who has read the poem "The Tale of Petya" knows where the expression "and a no brainer" came from. Singer of the revolution and one of the most significant Russian-speaking poets Vladimir Mayakovsky chose this particular animal to ridicule stupidity. So the innocent inhabitant of the forest became a victim of the sharp pen of the poet.

These expressions are familiar to us from childhood, but where did they come from?

Eat clear!

“And it’s a no-brainer” - this expression became famous thanks to Mayakovsky’s poem (“It’s clear even to a hedgehog - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It appeared in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (grades A, B, C, D, E) or one year (grades E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, two-year students were already ahead of them in a non-standard program, so at the beginning of the school year, the expression "no brainer" was very relevant.

rub glasses

whipping boy

Whipping boys in England and other European countries of the 15th - 18th centuries were called boys who were brought up with princes and received corporal punishment for the prince's misdeeds. The effectiveness of this method was no worse than the direct flogging of the culprit, since the prince did not have the opportunity to play with other children, except for the boy, with whom he had a strong emotional connection.

Tutelka in tyutelka

Tyutelka is a diminutive of the dialectal tyutya (“hit, hit”), the name of an exact hit with an ax in the same place during carpentry work. Today, to denote high accuracy, the expression "tutelka in tyutelka" is used.

Nick down

In another sense, a bribe, an offering, was called a nose. The expression "to stay with the nose" meant to leave with an unaccepted offering, without an agreement.

play on nerves

After the discovery by ancient doctors of the nerves in the human body, they named them by their resemblance to the strings of musical instruments with the same word - nervus. From this came the expression for annoying actions - "play on the nerves."

Not at ease

Today in French in everyday life the word assiette means "plate". However, earlier, no later than in the XIV century, it meant "the seating of guests, their location at the table, that is, near the plates." Then, with the expansion of the circle of connections, assiette became "the location of the military camp" and then the city. In the 17th century the word absorbed all the “concretenesses” of possible “positions” and began to denote any “position” in general ... In the same century, assiette also had a figurative meaning - “a state of mind”.

Pour in the first number

Orphan Kazan

Pass through the red thread

By order of the English Admiralty, since 1776, in the production of ropes for the navy, a red thread must be woven into them so that it cannot be removed even from a small piece of rope. Apparently, this measure was intended to reduce the theft of ropes. This is where the expression “pass like a red thread” about the main idea of the author throughout the entire literary work comes from, and Goethe was the first to use it in the novel “Elective Affinity”.

give the go-ahead

Beluga roar

Beluga whale

Blue blood

The Spanish royal family and nobility prided themselves on the fact that, unlike the common people, they traced their ancestry to the West Goths and never mixed with the Moors who entered Spain from Africa. Unlike the dark-skinned commoners, blue veins stood out on the pale skin of the upper class, and therefore they called themselves sangre azul, which means "blue blood". Hence, this expression for the designation of the aristocracy penetrated into many European languages, including Russian.

Get to the handle

In ancient Rus', kalachi was baked in the shape of a castle with a round bow. Citizens often bought kalachi and ate them right on the street, holding this bow, or handle. For reasons of hygiene, the pen itself was not used for food, but was given to the poor or thrown to be eaten by dogs. According to one version, they said about those who did not disdain to eat it: it reached the handle. And today the expression “to reach the handle” means to completely sink, to lose human appearance.

Spreading thought along the tree

In the "Lay of Igor's Campaign" one can find the lines: "Boyan the prophetic, if someone wanted to compose a song, spread his mind along the tree, like a gray wolf on the ground, a gray eagle under the clouds." Translated from Old Russian, "mys" is a squirrel. And because of a mistranslation, in some editions of the Lay, a playful expression appeared, “to spread thought along the tree,” which means to go into unnecessary details, to be distracted from the main idea.

Skeleton in the closet

“Skeleton in the closet” is an English expression that means a certain hidden fact of the biography (personal, family, corporate, etc.), which, if made public, can cause significant damage to reputation.

The appearance of the expression is associated with medicine. Doctors in Britain were not allowed to work on dead bodies until 1832. And the only bodies available for autopsy for medical purposes were those of executed criminals. Although the execution of criminals was by no means uncommon in 18th-century Britain, it was unlikely that a particular doctor would have many corpses in his possession over his career history. For this reason, it was common practice for a doctor, who had the good fortune to dissect the corpse of an executed criminal, to keep the skeleton for research purposes. Public opinion at the same time did not allow doctors to keep the skeletons in sight, so they were forced to keep them away from prying eyes. For this reason, many suspected that doctors kept skeletons somewhere, and one of these places could be a closet.

“And it’s a no-brainer” - this expression became famous thanks to Mayakovsky’s poem (“It’s clear even to a hedgehog - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It appeared in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited teenagers who had two years left to study (grades A, B, C, D, E) or one year (grades E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, two-year students were already ahead of them in a non-standard program, so at the beginning of the school year, the expression "no brainer" was very relevant.

rub glasses

whipping boy

Tutelka in tyutelka

Nick down

In another sense, a bribe, an offering, was called a nose. The expression "to stay with the nose" meant to leave with an unaccepted offering, without an agreement.

play on nerves

Not at ease

In French, assiette is both a plate and a mood, a state. Presumably, the erroneous translation of the French expression caused the appearance of the phraseological unit "not at ease".

Pour in the first number

Orphan Kazan

Pass through the red thread

By order of the English Admiralty, since 1776, in the production of ropes for the navy, a red thread must be woven into them so that it cannot be removed even from a small piece of rope. Apparently, this measure was intended to reduce the theft of ropes. This is where the expression “pass like a red thread” about the main idea of the author throughout the entire literary work comes from, and Goethe was the first to use it in the novel “Elective Affinity”.

give the go-ahead

Beluga roar

Blue blood

Get to the handle

Spreading thought along the tree

Skeleton in the closet

The appearance of the expression is associated with medicine. Doctors in Britain were not allowed to work on dead bodies until 1832. And the only bodies available for autopsy for medical purposes were those of executed criminals. Although the execution of criminals was by no means uncommon in 18th-century Britain, it was unlikely that a particular doctor would have many corpses in his possession over his career history. For this reason, it was common practice for a doctor, who had the good fortune to dissect the corpse of an executed criminal, to keep the skeleton for research purposes. Public opinion at the same time did not allow doctors to keep the skeletons in sight, so they were forced to keep them away from prying eyes. For this reason, many suspected that doctors kept skeletons somewhere, and one of these places could be a closet.

quiet glanders

The word sape means "hoe" in French. In the 16th-19th centuries, this term denoted a method of digging a trench or tunnel to approach enemy fortifications. Now the expression "on the sly" means "quietly, imperceptibly penetrate somewhere." Initially, it meant "secretly digging, digging a secret tunnel."

Often the purpose of digging such trenches was to lay explosives under the fortification, so the word "sapper" is also from these times.

suffer from bullshit

And here is the promised obscenity. Information about how recently the word "dick" has acquired obscene coloring, definitely sets up philosophical reflections about conditionality of prohibitions.

In Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" we read: "- And milk mushrooms? - suddenly asked Ferapont, pronouncing the letter "g" aspirated, almost like a dick. Of course, the classic didn’t have anything bad in mind - a century and a half ago, the aspirated letter “x” was called that in the Church Slavonic alphabet, that’s all.

After the reform of 1918, the name of the letter disappeared from primers, but the word itself remained in spoken language. Since there was no object, but the word was, it quickly found a use - they began to replace them famous word from three letters. Yes, with such success that after a couple of decades, the obscene meaning was finally assigned to a harmless word.

The most ironic thing is that the origin of the name of the disgraced letter was originally quite divine - from the word "cherub".

At the same time, the word "garbage" began to sound indecent, which is not even a derivative of dick. This is just the name of a common hernia, derived from the Latin term hernia. Such a diagnosis in the 19th century was often made to wealthy petty-bourgeois children who wanted to "slope" from military service- the peasants usually did not have enough money for "garbage". So then half of Russia suffered from garbage. Not like now.

Latest Chinese Warning

Those born in the 60s of the last century remember how this expression arose. But the next generations were already deprived of the pleasure of following the confrontation between the United States and China at the turn of the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. When in 1958 China, outraged that the US air and navy were supporting Taiwan, issued its angry note called "Last Warning", the world trembled with horror and held its breath in anticipation of a third world war.

When, seven years later, China issued the four hundredth note under the same name, the world no longer shook with horror, but with laughter. Fortunately, next terrible words China did not go, Taiwan retained its independence, which Beijing still does not recognize. Those who know about the origin of the expression use it correctly: in fact, it is not about last warning but about empty threats that will not be followed by action.

slap

This word, as well as the expression "Hey, hat!", Has nothing to do with headgear. It came into slang speech from Yiddish and is a warped form of the German verb "schlafen" - "sleep". “Hat”, respectively, means “sleepy, open”. While you are here hat, your suitcase is drape.

bosom friend

Everything is obvious here: a bosom friend is one with whom you can jointly “pour over the Adam's apple”, that is, mentally drink.

A woman with a twist

And this image was given to us personally by Leo Tolstoy. It was he who first introduced the expression "a woman with a twist."

In his drama The Living Corpse, one character says to another: "My wife ideal woman was... But what can I say? There was no zest, - you know, is there a zest in kvass? - there was no game in our life.

Cast pearls before swine

These are the words from the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ: “Do not give anything holy to dogs and do not cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample it under their feet and turn and tear you to pieces.” "Bible Matt. 7:6" / Synodal translation, 1816-1862

With pearls, the phrase sounds somewhat more logical, and the expression about beads, which is ideal in its meaninglessness, can be easily explained - this is how pearls used to be called in Rus'. So the word "beads" was fixed in the expression and got into colloquial speech from the Church Slavonic text of the Bible.

Filkin's letter

Unlike Trishka with a caftan or Kuzka with his mysterious mother, Filka is a completely historical person. This is the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Metropolitan Philip II of Moscow. He was a short-sighted man and apparently forgot that main responsibility the Moscow high priest is the zealous giving to Caesar of Caesar's. I thought, imagine, to describe in detail the bloody atrocities of the regime of the then ruler, Ivan the Terrible - to write true stories about how many people the king tortured, tortured, burned and poisoned. The tsar called the Metropolitan’s writing “Filka’s letter”, explained that all this was not true and imprisoned Filka in a distant monastery, where the sent assassins quickly killed the metropolitan.

Places not so remote

In the Penal Code of 1845, places of exile were divided into "remote" and "not so remote". By "remote" was meant the Siberian provinces and further Sakhalin, by "not so remote" - Karelia, Vologda, Arkhangelsk regions and some other places located just a few days away from St. Petersburg. This turnover has firmly entered the language of the writers of the second half of XIX century to indicate links.

Not at ease

The expression comes from the French phrase n'être pas dans son assiette. The French word assiette means not only "plate", but also "position; state; mood".

A famous tale says that in early XIX centuries unfortunate translator, translated the phrase "buddy, you're out of sorts" from some French play as "you're not at ease."

Alexander Sergeevich Griboedov could not pass by such a brilliant blunder and put an illiterate phrase into Famusov's mouth: “My dear! You are not at ease. Sleep is needed from the road. WITH light hand poet's crazy phrase has taken root in the Russian language.

Not scared idiot

The authorship of the expression is attributed to Ilya Ilf. IN " notebooks”, which the writer has been leading since 1925, there is a phrase: “The land of unafraid idiots. It's time to scare." The expression parodied the title of Prishvin's then popular book "In the land of fearless birds."

In the 80s of the last century, the phrase had a continuation: "The country of not frightened idiots and evergreen tomatoes." The authorship of the second part belongs to Mikhail Zhvanetsky - "evergreen tomatoes" first appeared in his miniature "You weren't buried in Odessa in August?"

Sharpen laces

Lyasy (balusters) are chiseled curly columns of railings at the porch. At first, “sharpening balusters” meant having an elegant, whimsical, ornate (like balusters) conversation. However, there were few craftsmen to conduct such a conversation, and over time, the expression began to mean empty chatter.