Griasti

[Hugh Olmsted]

Dear friends and colleagues,
A little more on "griasti."  The verb is, as Ol'ga Meerson quite  
rightly says, is of Church Slavonic origin in Russian.  And its use  
in Russian has many echoes of that past, some of them spiritual,  
ecclesiastical, or elevated, some of them mock-serious, some of them  
merely pretentious.
For this reason, the participle "грядущий" isn't quite the  
same as "будущий".
In journalism and bureaucratese you can hear a lot of phrases like  
"Что нам готовит день (год) грядущий?"
And of course there are fixed phraseologisms like "на сон  
грядущий"
In the Church Slavonic Gospels, it is repeatedly used  
eschatologically for the   "Coming" of the Lord, but within the  
context of  the Church language can also have a more neutral sense  
simply of "come," "coming" (Blagosloven Griadushchii / Griadyi vo  
imia Gospodne 'blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord').

Etymoiogically it is from the same Indo-European root as is Latin  
*gred- (which takes the alternate form *gres- before suffixes  
beginning in t- or s-) / *grad-;   as in Engl. "ingredient" (also  
from a participle, lit. that which enters into), "aggression,"  
"congress," "digress," "progress," "regress," "retrogress," etc. ;  
"grade," "gradual," "graduate," "degrade," "degree," etc.
In Russian Church Slavonic and Russian it has the form *griad-," with  
the "ia" from a Common Slavic nasal; derived from proto-Slavic *gre-n- 
d, an original nasal infix of Indo-European origin sometimes used in  
present (or Slavic future-perfective) stems like "*siad-"  (*se-n-d)  
'sit down' or "*bud-" (*bu-n-d-) 'be, come into being'.

Back to our original context: "griasti" for dog-walking (Paul  
Gallagher's May 11 ""To invite the pack to go for a walk --  
Пойдем грясти!").  Does anybody know how this meaning was  
perceived in the language of the time?  Was it really a neutral kind  
of  walking?  Or was it grandeliquent, mock-serious talk for Man's  
Best  Friend, the Venerable Quadruped?

Hugh Olmsted

On May 12, 2009, at 1:50 AM, Tatiana wrote:

> Hugh,
> Very interesting comment about the two verbs. For some reason I was  
> also a little bit confused by the usage of the word "грясти"  
> in the meaning of "to walk". I looked up the word "грясти" in  
> a Russian/Russian dictionary (Толковый словарь  
> русского языка, под ред. Н.Ю. Шведова,  
> Москва, 2007) and it turned out that the modern meaning of  
> this word is "приближаться, наступать". Ex.:  
> грядут великие события. As for the adjective  
> "грядущий", according to the dictionary, it is the same as  
> "будущий". Ex.: грядущие годы, события.  
> Грядущие поколения. Думать о  
> грядущем (сущ.). So from what I see, it seems like the  
> verb might have lost the meaning of "to walk" in the modern Russian  
> language.
> Best,
> Tatiana Shcherbinina
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures  
> list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Hugh Olmsted
> Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:02 PM
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Dogs in Russian literature
>
> Vera--
> There are two different verbs whose infinitives are easy to mix up.
> (Tut vse-taki rech' idet o dvukh raznykh glagolakh, nesmotria na
> bol'no pokhozhie ili dazhe odinakovye po proiznosheniiu
> neopredelennykh form: itak, Iz oblasti grammaticheskikh i otchasti
> paronimicheskikh melochei --)
>     1). грести, гребу гребёт гребут (gresti,
> grebu grebet grebut) -- eto 'scull, row a boat; rake, rake in'
>           Пловец гребет ; челнок летит
> стрелою...;
>                                               <В. Жуковский>
>     2). грясти, гряду грядёт грядут (griasti
> griadu griadet griadut) -- eto 'walk, be on the way, lie ahead, be in
> store'.
>           Я у тебя раб, / Ты у меня князь.
>           Не ветер в горах / Седины отряс.
>           Гудит в мраморах / Двенадцатый
> час.
>           Высок, одинок / Грядет государь.
>                                                 <М. Цветаева>
> Хью Олмстед
>
> On May 11, 2009, at 5:09 PM, Vera Beljakova wrote:
>>
>> ...
>> Walk -- Грясти [ isn't that to row a boat?  vb ]
>> Do you want to go for a walk? -- Тебе хочется
>> грясти? (very weird translit. -- pbg)
>> ...
>>
>> Vera Beljakova
>> Johannesburg
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> -
>> ---
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