What does the word "deck" mean? There are quite a lot of meanings of this word. Among them are both common and dialectic. You will learn about all of them, as well as the spelling of this word, by reading this article.
So, we list all the meanings of the word. The deck is ...
Oldest value
The ancient word "deck" in Ancient Russia denoted an infinite number of something.
As you know, the modern numbering, which we used to use, was introduced by Peter I. In ancient Russia, the alphabetic designation of numbers was used to record numbers. Historically, this system of counting dates back to the Proto-Slavic roots. It was used until the XVII century. Now it can be found only in Church Slavonic sources, including chronicles.
This number was the largest for calculating anything. It was equal to ten ravens (one hundred million) in small Cyrillic numeration.
Raven, vran - this number in the ancient Russian accounting system, in turn, was equal to ten million.
On the letter, the number "Deck" is the first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet "az", beginning the alphabet and the system of signs. Above it, as above all the notation of numbers in the Cyrillic alphabet, stood titlo, and above and below the square brackets.
The deck is sometimes called a "log." In one of the sources we meet: “And more than that it is good for the human mind to reason”, that is, it is impossible to imagine anything more.
Deck as a wine measure
The dictionary of F. A. Brockhaus and I. A. Efron reports that, speaking of the feasts of Prince Vladimir the Great, the annals of Pereyaslavl of Suzdalsky mention that in the presence of the prince at the court "pepper ... three decks for a week came out." The deck contained eight barrels. True, the magnitude of this barrel due to lack of information to establish today is not possible. It was probably the usual 40 buckets (i.e., about 492 liters) of liquid, but maybe more.
For bulk products such as cereals and flour, not decks and barrels were used, but other measured volumes - bread (for example, cad, pood, basket, etc.).
Dahl
In his famous Dictionary, Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl, in addition to dialectic "decks", also offers a quite traditional, common sense, which to this day we put in this word.
So what does the word “deck” mean? According to Dahl, this is
a thick tree, a log or a considerable and thick cut, a felled tree, a lying tree in the forest.
In the same dictionary, a thing made of a deck or any large piece of wood stump was also called so - for example, a rough trough for drinking or feeding livestock. Or shuttle, beehive, gutter, etc., hollowed out of a whole log.
In a figurative sense, this can be said of a clumsy, awkward, sedentary person. “Through the stump of a deck” is an expression for identifying things done somehow, hastily, carelessly, very badly. This is a colloquial idiom (idiom), said with a touch of disapproval.
In the Russian language there are quite a few sayings with this word:
“Do not tear the deck if there is no strength” - that is, do not take up the matter, being not sure that you will do it as it should.
"He was going to go around the stump, but ran over the deck" - driven by the desire to avoid minor troubles can get big problems.
There are puzzles: "Lies across the deck path. There are twelve nests, each with four eggs, and seven embryos in an egg." What is it? Answer: year.
In prison
Wooden or iron decks (blocks) were used in the old days in prisons to immobilize prisoners. They consisted of two boards with holes in which the legs of the arrested were clamped. Sometimes hands and even the prisoner's head were inserted into the same decks. In the latter case, they were used both as a means of torture and as a means of punishment.
They said: they filled him with pads. Or: sent in blocks by stage. A prisoner imprisoned in such peculiar fetters was called a well.
An additional humiliation was the exposure of a prisoner immobilized in this way to a public place.
Decks and pads were abolished in Europe in the first third of the 19th century, and in African countries only at the beginning of the 20th century.
As you know, the English writer and traveler Daniel Defoe in 1703 for one of his pamphlets was sentenced by the court to seven years in prison, a fine and a shameful pillar - a place on the London city square where the condemned stood, chained in blocks, for three days. According to a still existing legend, the writer was not ridiculed during this punishment; on the contrary, he achieved his triumph: the townspeople brought him flowers, decorated the pillar itself with garlands and read aloud his writings.
In a card game
The word "deck" also refers to a deck of playing cards. Card decks can be full or abbreviated - 36 or 52 cards.
Cards included in the deck can be made of plastic, high quality paper, such as satin.
The most famous is a deck of playing cards, drawings on which were made by academician of painting A.I. Charlemagne. This deck gained circulation and fame by the second half of the XIX century. Use it in our days.
The deck made in the so-called "Russian style" - with images of figures and costumes of participants in the court costume ball, which took place in 1903 in the building of the Winter Palace, gained great popularity in Russia.
The "German deck" is known in Germany. It consists of 32 cards and is used for traditional German card games (e.g. ramp). This deck appeared in the southern regions of Germany in the 15th century. As well as the "French deck", which was used mainly for playing bridge. It consists of 54 cards.
Without delving into the topic of fortune-telling on cards, which is almost endless for cognition and discussion, we add to the above that during fortunetelling, for example, Tarot cards can use both full classic decks (they are also called "older"), as well as younger and younger truncated. The full deck of Tarot cards consists of 22 major arcana (meanings, sacraments), 56 minor and 2 cards called White.
As a rule, in the course of specialist tarologists, universal and traditional decks of cards, either copyrighted or specialized, that is, aimed at solving a certain range of issues.
Spelling of the word
"Deck" is a vocabulary normative word; its spelling is enshrined in spelling and explanatory dictionaries. The emphasis falls on the second syllable with the vowel "o": a col. The first and third syllables are unstressed. And if the vowel "a" at the end of the word usually does not cause difficulties in spelling, then the first vowel of the word "deck" cannot be selected for the test. The spelling of this word should be remembered.