The theme of this article is the well-known phraseology “from rags to riches”. Where did he come from? The Dahl dictionary contains its primary form - a proverb known in the 19th century, which includes words discarded by subsequent condensation. First, the old people said: "Taken from the mud," and then added: "... put into riches." The basis of phraseologism is, as you know, a metaphor that implies an abrupt change in the position of a person in society due to rapid enrichment. What is the metaphor? On the one hand, the initial state is correlated - poverty with dirt, on the other - a higher social level, which is most often associated with wealth, that is, with the status of a prince. It is speed that is meant when correlating two opposing concepts with the help of rhyme, which gives the general dynamics to the phraseology “from rags to riches”.
Origin
When did the proverb appear? It is obvious that in Ancient Russia the phrase "from rags to riches" could not arise. The title was passed from father to son. Neither the boyars nor the nobles (who emerged as a narrow social stratum of the military under the prince in the 12th century) could become a prince. The situation has not changed in the XVI century, under Tsar John IV (Ivan the Terrible), when the nobles were equated with the boyars. The principle “rocked” in the XVII century, during the reign of the second king from the Romanov dynasty, Alexei Mikhailovich, who abundantly elevated various nobles to princely titles, exceeding the number of “gifted princes” over the original. However, the real “turning point” occurred in the 18th century, when the Tsar reformer Peter I introduced the practice of rewarding the princely title with the merits “before the Tsar and the Fatherland”. The first person granted the title of prince is Menshikov, "a minion of happiness is rootless," as A. Pushkin wrote about him. A worthy man, no doubt. But is the poet’s phrase itself an analogue “from rags to riches”? The text is essentially the same. It was the “bestowed princes”, the number of which exceeded the original ones many times later in the 19th century, which served as the basis for the creation of this derogatory phraseological unit.
Modern context
How is the phrase “from rags to riches” used in our time? In the virtual XXI century, mainly due to crises (which, in the context of the Chinese language, as we know, have the meaning of “opportunity”), individuals quickly became rich, nouveau riche. Some of them, having not learned how to make other people happy, acquired reflexes, “how to pull on themselves” a money cake. Here we must clarify specifically for readers that we are not talking about those rich people who perceive personal wealth as an opportunity to invest in society, but relationships with other people as cooperation. By that, as they say, God gave wealth. Thus, the essence of the proverb today is the emphasis on the broken harmony between material status and the intellectual, spiritual world of a rich man. Often a synonymous phraseology for him would be "a crow in peacock feathers." A proverb is in demand in fiction. “If you are not in this world, or From rags to riches” - a book with that name came from the pen of Marina Rybitskaya and Yulia Slavachevskaya.