The ending and meaning of this phrase are known to everyone. But how would you "translate" the following into a literary language: "What the hell did you do?" This is not quite easy to do: if the meaning can be conveyed something like this: "why did you do so much (you can substitute any verb depending on the situation: put it down, piled it up, piled it up, wrote it, etc.)?", then it is simply impossible to express the expression of the phrase in other words. What is more important in this small sentence - meaning or expression? Of course, expressions, meaning is present only as its background. This is the leading, characteristic feature of slang-vernacular words: expression suppresses, drowns out the meaning, while the specific meaning is deduced from the situation. The main core of the phrase is the word Fig

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(fig), around which expressiveness is born. But what does it mean? Dictionaries of the Russian language give the following meanings: 1. Fig tree, fig, fig; 2. Kukish. Try to "substitute" these values in this phrase, and you will see that this substitution will fail. So what is the secret of figs! Let's try to answer this question.

Maybe the history of the word will help - after all, the letter f in words always indicates the borrowed character of the token? The word figa "lives" in Russian since the beginning of the XVIII century and is believed to have come from the Polish figa (<other-in-it figa < lat. ficus); of course, you noticed that the Russian language adopted this word in the Latin shell - ficus "a houseplant with oval leaves". However, the Slavs were familiar with the concept for a long time, they called it fig (fig tree), Old Slavonic (and Old Russian) borrowing from Greek or even Gothic (according to M. Fasmer), the designation Smyrna berry was less often used. Through the southern Russian territories in the first half of the XIX century, the word fig (borrowed from Turkish) entered the Russian language.

But the Russian language is not limited to borrowing this Polonism. In the second half of the XVIII century, the phrase faire la figue (a qn) was copied from French; in the Russian language of that time, it was transmitted as follows: to show, show, put, deliver a cookie to someone (Radishchev, Derzhavin). As a result, the expression show a fig appeared in the Russian language. So, the word fig in the meaning of "kukish" is a semantic calculation of the French concept. But still, from such a fig to the modern use of this word - the semantic distance is huge. What happened to the concept next?

It was drawn into the semantic field of kukish-shish. In Russian mythology, shish is a generalized idea of evil spirits, a brownie or bath spirit, a devil, or a demon. For a long time in the Russian folk language there were expressions: "do not be afraid of anyone"; letters. - do not be afraid of shisha, the devil", shish you with a whistle "you will not get anything; letters. - you will be left with a shish (devil), the characteristic feature of which was precisely the whistle", before shish " there are many, not to count, not to count; letters. - multiplicity, variety of shish (devils)", shish with butter, shish on vegetable oil "do not get anything" and under. The Kukish also "defended" themselves from the Shisha, since it was believed that the kukish had magical power, which the shishi (devils) were "afraid" of.

Of course, kukish is not the only designation for a certain place in the Russian language. Dialects give different lexical variants: dula (in South Russian dialects; borrowed from Polish dula), stavok (nowg., etymology clearly indicates-from the verb to put kukish), kapok or kopok (Tver., Pskov.), filka (from the word simpleton). Therefore, in the vernacular, synonymy was easily performed.-

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kaya replacement: show kukish = show shish = show doulu = show fig. So the gallicism of fig found itself in the semantic network of the Russian concepts of kukish and shisha and was easily adapted: already at the beginning of the XIX century, the verb fig was found in Pskov dialects "to show each other kukish, to quarrel". A curious tautological repetition of identical, in fact, concepts in the proverb of the beginning of the XIX century: a book, and in it a cookie and a fig. It is not accidental, but shows the transition period of mastering a foreign concept with the help of the Russian equivalent, which at first still "supports" the foreign word. Later, the phrase was transformed: he looks at a book, but sees a fig, he doesn't understand anything in his eyes; or a more familiar truncated version: he looks at a book, but sees a fig.

So, a fig is, on the one hand, a cookie, but, on the other, also a shish. Kukish-amulet gesture; shish - devil, demon, brownie, "manager" of a territory beyond the control of man. If in French la fique has a very specific meaning, then in Russian it has acquired, moreover, an abstract one - something incomprehensible, unknown, unknown to a person (located in the area of possession of a shisha-trait). The French concept "outgrown" its etymological boundaries, obeying the semantics and symbolism of the Russian language.

On the one hand, this explains the reasons for the morphological variation of the word in Russian: in French, it is a feminine noun (cf. in Russian, also fig), but the influence of the words kukish, shish on the semantics of gallicism "translated" it into the category of masculine nouns-fig (apparently, this happened already in the first half XX century). Both morphological variants co-exist in modern Russian.

On the other hand, it helps to understand and trace a huge number of syntactic and word-forming models in which the word is involved (there are no such models in French), as well as to find out semantic transitions and semantic trends in the development of figs in Russian, especially in youth jargon.

The active inclusion of the word fig in the Russian language system began, apparently, in the last decades of the XIX century, since in Dahl's Dictionary, except for the figurative meaning of fig "kukish", there is no hint of new syntactic features of this lexeme. Of course, the substitution of kukish and figs was "developed" in the language earlier - at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Then the second stage of mastering this concept began - its inclusion in the syntactic models of the words shish and chert (usually phraseologized): shish with butter, money-shish, no shisha (no damn), shish (damn) knows it, shish (damn) with you and under. Replace the lexemes shish, hell-fig, and you will see that the meaning is practically preserved. So the word fig "absorbed" the metaphorical meaning of " what belongs to the potustoron-

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it is the force, the other world; that which is incomprehensible, unknown." In which social groups did this replacement and "introduction" of figs take place in the old, traditional contexts? Most likely, not in the peasant environment (kukish and shish performed a taboo function there), but in the urban vernacular (journalists, students, students - children of priests); for them, first of all, expressiveness of expression was important, and not the magical and ritual origins of these concepts.

In the future (20 - 30s of the XX century), the syntactic "supplier" of such models was almost forgotten, and the formation of new stable combinations with the word fig(a) occurred without resorting to the old language (peasant) formulas. Here are just a few examples taken by us from the literary texts of the 20-50s of the XX century: figs would know; instead of a prize-figs; figs will wash the spot; figs to you; figs with it; well, it's figs; and fuck you; figs you need it; not a fig is visible; not a damn car; fig (a) with oil, etc. Fig increasingly "moved away" from the magical shisha (trait), becoming an expressive expression (mainly among young people) with a very vague meaning of something completely unusual or incomprehensible (previously in Russian mythology, this "unknown" area was the zone of "possession" of shisha). The mysterious, enigmatic shish disappeared, giving way to the expressive and gruff fig (fig). It is this semantics that later became crucial for the emergence of new word-forming models.

The time has come for the word-forming "flourishing" of figs, the number of derivatives of which in the spoken language is simply difficult to calculate. It all started with nouns-garbage, figovina, figulina, figacia, figulya, figulka, language products of the 60s-70s of the XX century. Is this an accident? No, this is the time of a "thaw" and the penetration of many words and expressions of a youth-slang nature into the literature.

All these lexemes are formed according to rather rare (and therefore fresh, unusual) colloquial word-forming models of nouns na-nya (nonsense, daub, swearing), nouns na-ovina (straw, thing), - ulina (squiggle), - yatia (such as subject names of foreign origin acacia, radio), - ulya (rogulya); almost all models are very expressive in Russian. That is why it is impossible to give the exact meaning of the given nouns, they are situational and depend on the subject, topic of conversation: garbage can mean from "nonsense, chatter" (I will not listen to your garbage!) up to "object, thing" (what kind of garbage did you bring into the house?); the words figovina, figulina, figacia, figula have a more specific meaning: "some incomprehensible, strange thing" (what kind of figovina did you build? where did you put that thing?" where would you go?

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swarm this figure? what kind of figure is this? But still, for the speaker in such cases, there is a moment of ambiguity, incomprehensibility, the purpose or purpose of things, words, etc. (that's where the legacy of the ancient shisha is!).

From here - only one semantic step to the next derivative: the adjective fig "bad, nasty, disgusting" (with the emphasis shifted to the suffix to avoid homonymy with the literary and book fig "related to the fig tree"). The adverb figovo "bad, disgusting, bad" also appeared (the thing is made in a bad way). This is an extremely important stage in the development of the" Russian "meaning of figs, since the formation of adjectives, adverbs always indicates the" fragmentation " in the minds of people of the sign into smaller parts, sides, facets. But a sign in Russian grammar can be expressed by an adjective (a sign that exists in space), a verb (a sign that exists in time), and an adverb (a sign that exists at a specific point in time or space). That is why in the youth language in the 70s - 80s of the XX century there are so many derivatives with a very unclear, approximate meaning, but strong expressiveness. These are, in particular, verbs that show the intensity of the sign's manifestation: figet "to be surprised, to admire; to get tired"; figachit, figarit, figanut "to go (go), move, work intensively, (c) do something"; figaknutsya "fall; try to enter; get somewhere; break, break", etc. This also includes numerous derivatives with prefixes: prifiget "stop understanding something", ofiget "stop thinking normally", zafigachit "hit; knock; send", etc.

The list of such formations in the jargon includes dozens of units. A common semantic component of all verb forms is the meaning of the intensity of the action performed (regardless of its specific nature).

If fig indicates a bad quality of an object or person, then how do you express their "positive" sides? A participle appeared-the adjective awesome (awesome movie! awesome friend!), as well as the adjective awesome (awesome exhibition!). Please note that in these participles and adjectives there is no pure "positivity" (this is generally a property of jargon - it usually does not mark the excellent "objective" quality of an object, thing, person), but there is an extreme, excessive degree of surprise, admiration, shocking. It is precisely this exaggerated mental "extreme" of human feelings that is replaced in jargon by a positive and negative (rational) assessment of a thing.

Social factors have had a surprising impact, affecting Fig (y). When is this concept in the 70s - 80s of the XX century from the jargon of pe-

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it came into common use, becoming one of the elements of the " general jargon "(inter-jargon), it was reinterpreted in a paradoxical way. Already within the limits of youth slang, the expression "it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter"was formed. Interjargon significantly strengthened this meaning, turning it into a kind of idea, a "philosophy" of apathetic and ironic attitude to life and reality. A person who follows such a model of behavior began to be called a pofigist, and the life principle itself-pofigism (the book suffixes-ist, - ism were intended to set off and strengthen this irony of designations). In the Russian colloquial language, the term apophegee, first used in literature in the late 80's, has penetrated and strengthened. Polyakov as the title of the story "Apophegee" (1989) - concatenation (contamination) of the words apogee and pofigism.

So, before our eyes passed the history and stages of mastering the word fig borrowed from the French language, which on the Russian language soil gave surprisingly abundant shoots. Russian youth jargon mastered this lexeme morphologically (turning it into a masculine word-the influence of the words kukish, shish); introduced stable combinations with these words into syntactic models; provided Russian suffixes and prefixes extremely actively; included expressions and concepts that are close (in terms of expression) in semantic networks. Without exaggeration, figo can be called one of the most expressive and noticeable elements of youth jargon of the XX century.

What is the fate of this word in the future? Will it remain? Will it acquire new derivatives? Will it retain its slang - vernacular character for a long time, or has it already become just a colloquial word? It is not easy to answer these "simple" questions, because it means predicting the linguistic fate of a word. Fig is one of the expressive and emotional words in the language of the XX century, which academician Yu. S. Stepanov aptly spoke about: "A group of emotionally expressive synonyms resembles a railway station: there are always a lot of people in it, but no one stays in it for a long time" (French Stylistics, Moscow, 1965, p. 111).

Saint-Petersburg.

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