Наименования радуги как реализация возможностей этнолингвистического притяжения
The names of the rainbow as a realization of the possibilities of ethnolinguistic adideation

Summary/Abstract: The author describes selected nominations of the rainbow in East-Slavic languages, situating them in multidimensional relations of ethnolinguistic adideation (ètnolingvističeskoe prityaženye). Ètnolingvističeskoe prityaženye is understood as a special case of folk (or false) etymology, which emerges when words of different (or opaque) etymologies are juxtaposed. As a result, a special kind of magic is activated. The most common East-Slavic name of the rainbow, raduga, is connected with (1) the Proto-Slavic root *rad- ‘joyful, merry’, or (2) the Proto-Slavic root *dǫga ‘arch’. The article is also concerned with the associations between raduga and the semantic fields of ‘giving birth’ and ‘stealing’. An analysis of three East-Slavic names of the rainbow rad-, rod- and krad-, confirms the possibility of various etymological solutions.

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