I recall Daniil Harms, who wanted to write such verses so that they could break the window. Dmitry Bykov talks about this in his lecture on Russian classics. But today we’ll talk not about heavy, but about easy words that can fly away. We analyze the meaning of phraseology “throw words to the wind”.
Lightness of words as a sign of frivolity
There are probably a huge number of people, or rather, a huge number of their classifications. But today we need only two parameters - “seriousness” and “frivolity”. If a person is serious, then he does not throw words into the wind, that is, he speaks thoughtfully and carefully. Nobody wants to deal with frivolous ones, because they don’t think what they are saying, although their language is probably well suspended.
The only trouble is that you cannot immediately distinguish one from the other. Here the criterion of truth can only be practice. Moreover, the lightness of words is not always indicative of a person’s moral baseness, sometimes he simply cannot fulfill his promise a little earlier. Causes? The reasons are very different, but more often it just became inconvenient for people to follow their own words, and the latter have sharply lost weight.
Thus, the meaning of phraseology “throw words to the wind” comes down to those promises that are said just like that, for the external effect.
History
After we learned about the meaning of sustainable expression, I really want to understand why this happened? There is no reinforced concrete and unambiguous version, but it is known that the ancient peoples attached great importance to the elements, including the wind, and the wind, as you know, walks everywhere. History has preserved cases when sorcerers and shamans spoke to someone precisely in windy weather, so that the spells would exactly reach the addressee. Probably, it all boils down to the fact that the words that became the prey of the wind evaporated from a certain place, that is, now they cannot be found with dogs. Therefore, they say "throw words to the wind." The meaning of phraseology is even intuitive.
Good and evil sequence
Before throwing stones on frivolous and frivolous people, let's say that keeping a word (also, by the way, phraseologism) is very difficult, and there are few people in the world who can boast that they never threw words to the wind. Why is that? Life is changeable, it is rather difficult to maintain a line of behavior, overcoming the resistance of being. We dare to assume that there are few truly frivolous and deceitful people, but many who lack the will. And even more of the promises and assurances are given in the wake of positive or negative emotions. When a person is supported in grief, it seems to him that he is now with friends forever. And there’s a great example - love. Rarely, when a person loves once and for all his life, usually romantic stories are two or three at least. But it’s interesting that each such adventure seems sincere and endless to the parties, that’s why both man and woman promise to love each other to the grave, but then something goes wrong and they part. And here we would blame them for inconsistency, in that lovers throw words to the wind. The meaning of phraseological units must be well known to them. But the language does not turn so to speak, for it is life.
What follows from this? Sometimes a little levity is not so bad. In addition, it is full of people who suffer because of their beliefs, and not in a political or ideological sense, but in a domestic way: they drag relatives, wives, just because they once gave their word. As Leo Tolstoy said: “You should not live so literally.” Indeed, sometimes principles also become the object of manipulation by other people.
The question of how to understand phraseologism “throw words to the wind” is no longer worth it. The main thing is to comprehend its relativity and sound approach to the truth contained in it.