Even in elementary school we are taught to count in the tens. We have all been familiar with these numbers since childhood, we use them daily without thinking. But how many noticed that one of the numbers stands out from the general series? Has anyone ever wondered the origin of the word "forty"?
Why is the figure so consonant with the feathered cheat? How are they connected?
Counting, we seem to highlight the number of tens - twenty, thirty, fifty. For each of these words, it is easy to understand exactly how many tens it contains in itself. But what about forty? How many are there? And why not fourteen? Where does this word come from?
The most interesting thing is that the bird has absolutely nothing to do with it! It generally has nothing to do with the origin of the word “forty” in Russian. Moreover, the name of the bird did not come from the number! The word for feathered beauty comes from “welding” and “magpie”, which came to us from Albanian and Bulgarian. That is how this bird was called in other dialects.
Often attributed to the influence of church glories. svrchat “make a sound” and close forms (see cricket, cricket), but the svorka proto form implies a sorrë “crow”. Option sorka compared with lat. cornīkh “crow”, corvus “raven”, Greek κόραξ "crow", κορώνη "crow".
It turns out that fur is involved here
When trading valuable fur was sold not one by one skin, but by bundles wrapped for safety in a large piece of fabric. Interestingly, each bundle included about forty skins, since for the sewing of one coat it was precisely this quantity that was quite sufficient. But in one such kit there could be both 39 and 41 skins, that is, still it did not differ much from what was needed. They sold beaver, sable fur, which is confirmed in the form of mentions in chronicles and letters.
"... Yes, five forty sables ...", "Yes, twenty-seven forty beaver ..."
The very origin of the word “forty” in most sources is tied to the name of that very piece of fabric, “forty”. Close in sound and meaning to it will be the “shirt”, the old Russian “shirt”.
That is, the word, created as a shorthand, for calculating just small skins, gradually supplanted the originally existing “fourteen”, migrated to the category of an ordinary numeral and assumed all its functions.
Other versions also exist.
So, for example, one of the versions of the appearance of this numeral is a kinship with the Greek word "Sarakont", which means church service. One of the arguments in favor of this version is often indicated by the presence in the Slavic vocabulary of the word "forty-leaved," which is also the name of the church service.
However, the absolute minority of linguists is inclined to the side of such an origin of the word “forty”.
The words that we use every day always have a history - their roots going back to other languages or to the essence of the subject itself. Sometimes understanding the history of the word helps to change the attitude to what it calls.