Often we hear that each person must find his own path in life. This phrase has become a kind of commonplace for all instruction. But few people think about the meaning of the word "road." Today we will correct this gap. The reader is even waiting for some surprise.
Origin
Usually we start our analysis with value, but not now. We do not promise that this will be a permanent column only if the origin is remarkable and accessible to a person without special education. We do not want to torment anyone.
The meaning of the word “road” meets our requirements, and we can talk about the original origin recorded in the etymological dictionary. So, the object of study reveals an unexpected relationship with the words “turf” and “tree”, as it comes from the same basis. “Dor” means “cleared place”, the ancestor - the verb “holes”, that is, “to tear”.
Other researchers develop this idea and clarify: once “roads” meant “ravines”, “hollows”. Perhaps it was through them that roads were laid in the forest. By the way, the same idea is expressed by the notorious general public Nikolai Uskov, the long-term editor of GQ magazine. Of course, its Russian version. But after all, N. Uskov is also a historian specializing in the Russian Middle Ages, even, it seems, is a candidate of science, but we can’t vouch for the latter.
The meaning of the word “road”, therefore, goes back to “tear”, because it was literally laid through the forest, tearing trees out of the way.
Meaning
Now it’s time to illuminate the immediate meaning of the word. Etymology is a good thing, but it is only an addition to the main dish. So, the explanatory dictionary states the following:
- Way of communication, a strip of land for movement. For example: "Asphalt road from home to school."
- The path to go or drive along. For example: "I wanted to go all the way to the edge of the forest, but a huge tree trunk blocked my path."
- Travel, trip. For example: "The long road home."
- Direction, route. For example: "Show me the way to the toy store, my nephew has his birthday today."
Thus, now the reader understands the lexical meaning of the word “road”; we have not hidden anything from him.
Synonyms
Without replacement words, the analysis of a particular word is incomplete. Therefore, we must provide the reader with synonyms, especially since the definition of "road" and analogues are often used in speech. Here is the list:
- way;
- method;
- travel;
- Trip;
- highway;
- track;
- lane;
- pass;
- hike;
- an approach;
- alley;
- access;
- wandering.
Of course, it was possible to indicate all kinds of roads and ways of moving along them, but we will not torture the reader with an abundance of words. The question of in what meanings the word “road” is used in the Russian language implies an infinite number of options, but four fixed in the explanatory dictionary of the basic meanings. Not so much, right? The word "time", for example, has as many as nine.
Physical and metaphysical
After the question of how many meanings of the word “road” was clarified, the conversation can be continued in a different vein.
The road is not only a physical concept, but also a metaphysical one. Not without reason, for example, there is such a novel by Jack Kerouac “On the Road” (1957), which is perceived as an odyssey in a new manner. But to whom the aesthetics of hipsters is not close, he can remember the well-known phrases “road to life”, “thorny road to success”. They make many meanings. There is no physical path in life; it is laid only by human efforts. In general, life is impassability, and a person’s path in life is more like a rope than a well-made track: it’s very difficult to go, and it’s very easy to get lost, get lost, and go astray.
The figurative value of the object of study is similar to the physical. When we think about such frequently used words, other meanings are unwittingly revealed to us. For example, the concept of “home” is more metaphysical than material and objective. The latter may include the definition of "home". A house is where a person feels good, comfortable, safe. For example, sometimes parental home cannot be considered a home, and a man or woman goes in search of his hearth along the way of life.
The road and the house are interconnected concepts. In an ideal world, with a smooth development of events, the road should always lead to the house, but, unfortunately, we do not live in a fairy tale. But many people's troubles come from the fact that they cannot find a way in life, and even if they can, then no shelter awaits them at the final point, so longing for solidarity, unity with other people is born, but instead the smile of the world becomes everything more sinister and cold. And if the roads in life were, as in the story of the Strugatsky Brothers “Noon, XXII Century”, self-propelled, it would be easier for us to live. But then character training would not have happened.