Difficult times have come: salaries stand still, and prices jump like crazy monkeys. Involuntarily, a person begins to think how to save an extra penny. And here the proverb is recalled: “the penny saves the ruble,” the meaning of which we will consider in the article.
Talk about the meaning
Our ancestors knew how to save. Those who remember their grandmothers will boldly confirm this: old women have every penny counts. They know how to make money and save money so that young people still learn and learn from them.
A penny saves a ruble: the meaning of this phrase is already becoming undeservedly forgotten. It can be heard from the lips of the elderly generation, and among young people there is an increasing call to take everything from life and not save on anything.
What is hidden under the expression? Let's imagine a situation where we have a certain amount of money, but not much is needed before the necessary amount. For example, we need a thousand rubles, and only 950 in our pocket. Yesterday we spent a fifty dollars on something, although cats hid in the depths of our hearts, demanding not to buy a completely superfluous product.
And from my own experience I have to make sure that a lot happens without a little. And some fifty rubles can play a significant role when they are not enough up to a thousand, and therefore, to the desired acquisition.
Origin
A penny saves a ruble: we now know the meaning of the saying. Let's find out about its origin.
Everything is confusing here, in fact. It is believed that the proverb came to us from distant ancestors. The peasants, as we know, had no money at all until a certain point, until serfdom was abolished. And rich people in ancient times did not make money, unlike modern ones. Every penny was counted for them. When the young rich boyars pulled their hands to their father's bins, they received a moral slap, and sometimes a physical one. The message was this: "Do not touch, the yellow-chicked chick, everything is counted from me. I find out that I stole it - you can’t take your heads off, every penny is recorded."
That is, the owner of the state knew its amount up to a penny, and in case of loss he could punish the thief. Hence the phrase "a penny saves the ruble."
Conclusion
So we figured out the meaning and origin of the proverb. As always happens, many of them come from old Russia when they walked the land of our tsar and the boyars. They were smart people, able to save, children brought up in severity. We cherished and counted every penny, and we inherited from them in the form of a well-known saying.