Russian proverbs, Dal' and exotic mammals

[John Dunn]

It may be worth noting that in the phrase любовь и/да совет [ljbov' i/da sovet], the latter word has the meaning 'harmony'.  This meaning is (dare I say it?) recorded by Dal',  and is even recorded by some post-Soviet dictionaries, but the phrase in question is, to the best of my knowledge, the only place where it survives in the present-day language.  

Judson Rosengrant's exegis of my previous e-mail is broadly correct, but the other reason why Dal' is helpful here is that it contributes towards dating the appearance of морская свинка [morskaja svinka] with the meaning of 'guinea pig', a question that been raised earlier in the thread.   In this connectiopn A. Aleksandrow's Polnyj russko-anglijskij slovar' (SPb, 1885), s.v. свинка [svinka], gives морская свинка [morskaja svinka] as 'porpoise' and гвинейская свинка [gvinejskaja svinka] as 'guinea-pig'; I suspect that the later may be an early example of Runglish.  

John Dunn.


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