The meaning of the Russian expression перемывать косточки (to be washing up the bones) (стр. 2 )

It should be noted, however, that a folk interpretation of a custom not often gives a key to its actual source, and only certain analytical procedure may help to discover its historical, or, as in our case, religious foundation.

All the components of the rite (the opening of the grave accompanied by ritual weeping, washing of the remains in water and wine, the funeral prayer in the church, placing of a wreath of flowers or a hat on the scull, anointing of the bones with oils) have a clearly memorial nature, that of a prayer for mercy, or of a sacrifice, all of which is not fully compatible with the idea of the protection against the vampires. Therefore, the second version, though less common, should be considered as a more ancient and fundamental, and the first ― merely as its derivative, created in the result of an overlap of the two purposes of the rite (i. e. memorial and preventative), followed by the complete loss of the original meaning. We shall not focus, however, on the detailed discussion of the above ffice is to say that none of the possible aspects of the study ― be it linguistic, geographical, ethnographical, or archeological ― manage to connect the history of our expression with the described Balkan ritual. Besides, the propagation of the custom on the Mount Athon Peninsula and in Greek Macedonia, in Thrace and Romania (ibid, 92) undermines the idea of its Slavic ethnical roots, allowing a conjecture of its pre-Slavic substratal nature.

2. Records of the expression in the Russian literary documents and dictionaries

Professor V. Vinogradov, having traced the history of Russian idiom through the XIX century fiction, admitted the hypothetical nature of his theory of the etymology of the expression and attempted to justify it by assuming, firstly, the late recording of the phrase (which entered the literary language by the middle of the XIX cent.), and secondly, the absence of any traces of "the ancient, original meaning (of this) lingual fact” in the contemporary vernacular (Виноградов, 1954, c. 3).

However, in our opinion Russian literary language of the latter XIX century as well as some local dialects and, to some extent, the contemporary vernacular show traces of the lingual facts, which allow us to make a more accurate semantic interpretation of the expression перемывать косточки {to be washing up the bones} and make it possible to indicate with better precision through comparison, the rites which lay at its foundation.

At least three versions of the expression discussed, with the meaning of ‘to gossip, to speak evil of’, are apparent in the literary sources of the XIX cent., or, more precisely, three derivatives of the verb to wash (перемывать/перемыть {to be washing up / to wash}; промывать/промыть {to be rinsing / to rinse}; вымывать/вымыть {to be washing out / to wash out}) which are idiomatically combined with the noun косточки/кости {little bones / bones} (Виноградов,1954, c. 4; Михельсон, 1997 II, c. 26, 73).

Double-lexis phrasal verb may be further complicated by the designation of a person, whom the action is directed at (or by its indication), which is most frequently grammatically expressed by a pronoun, a nominal noun, a proper name with the meaning of a person in the Dative or Genitive cases.

Comp.: Всем косточки перемыли, всем на калачи досталось…{everyone’s bones were washed up, everyone got his due} (Mel’nikov-Pecherski, In the Mountains). Одна из девиц встает и уходит. Оставшиеся начинают перемывать косточки ушедшей {One of the girls gets up and leaves. The rest begin washing up the bones of the one that has just left} (Chekhov, From the notes of the quick-tempered man). Она совершенно уверена, что я в настоящую минуту добела перемываю с вами косточки наших ближних. {She is absolutely sure, that right now I am washing up and bleaching with you the bones of our neighbors}. (Saltykov-Shchedrin, Essay 7)[1].

In the “Akademicheskij Slovar” {The Academic Dictionary – CA}, published in the beginning of the last century, we find some examples of the verbs used with the word кости {bones}, less frequent for the contemporary tradition, such as:

1)  перебрать чьи косточки {to sort out someone’s bones};

разобрать кого по косточкам {to dismantle someone bone by bone};

трясти чьи косточки (about the gossip) {to shake someone’s bones};

2)  разминать по косточкам {to kneed the bones} (Dostoyevski), with the contextually understood meaning of ‘to torment, to torture’ (СА IV, 6, p. 2400);

3)  волочить, мыкать, трясти, трепать свои (старые) кости {to drag, to pull apart, to shake, to flap one’s own (old) bones}, meaning ‘to get older, to be weak, to walk with an effort (to hardly walk)’;

4)  трясти костями {to shake the bones} ― said about giggling or laughter (ibid, 2421) .

Contemporary dictionaries of phraseology demonstrate frequent usage of only two of the above expressions: перемывать/перемыть косточки кому {to be washing up/ to wash up the bones of someone} (negative), meaning ‘to speak evil, gossip, make up stories of someone’ (БМС, c. 308; also see Мелерович, Мокиенко, 1997, c. 330–333; Яранцев, 1997, c. 411; Аристова, Ковшова и др. 1995, c. 221); and разбирать / разобрать по косточкам {to be dismantling / to dismantle bone by bone} 1. someone ‘to speak evil, gossip, make up stories of someone’; 2. something ‘to discuss something in great detail’ (БМС, c. 308; Мелерович, Мокиенко, 1997, c. 330–333), the second being noted by lexicographers only selectively. It is not mentioned in (Яранцев, 1997; Аристова, Ковшова и др., 1995).

By the end of the XX century the number of such phrase units, still very active in Russian literary language in XIX cent, gets drastically reduced[2]. For instance, expressions such as вымыть косточки, трясти кости {to wash out the bones, to shake the bones}, still quite popular just a century ago, are not registered by the contemporary lexicographical resources.

Based on the frequency of usage in the contemporary Russian, V. Vinogradov considers the expression перемывать косточки {to be washing the bones (of someone)} to be the nucleus of the lexical structure, and the expression промыть/вымыть косточки {to be rinsing the bones} in his opinion is the result of the later “budding” (Виноградов, 1954, c. 4–5). He regards the idiom перебрать косточки {to be sort out the bones} as just another secondary formation, and the expression разобрать по косточкам {to dismantle bone by bone} ― “an even later and hardly purely literary” formation (ibid).

A. Melerovich and V. Mokienko, the authors of the dictionary “Frazeologizmy russkoj rechi” {Phraseology of Russian Speech}, hold similar position, claiming the primary nature of the expression перемывать косточки {to be washing up the bones} in relation to idioms мыть кости {to wash the bones}, перетирать косточки {to rub the bones}, промывать косточки {to rinse the bones}, обмыть (все) кости {to rinse up (all) the bones}, перебирать/перебрать косточки {to be sorting out / to sort out the bones}, разбирать/разобрать по косточкам {to be dismantling / to dismantle bone by bone}(Мелерович, Мокиенко, 1997, c. 330–333).

Contrary to those authors, A. Fedorov refers to the form перемывать косточки {to be washing up bones} as merely a version of перебирать/перебрать косточки {to be sorting out / to sort out the bones} (marking it as a simplified form), and does not mention at all the expression разобрать по косточкам {to dismantle bone by bone} (Федоров, 1995, c. 371).

Even in the situation when there are no well established methods to discriminate between the innovational and archaic phraseology, the frequency criteria is hardly to be taken as decisive. It seems that without early (prior to XIX cent.) records the best method is to use the most widely propagated form as the landmark, conditionally assuming it to be the basic form. The exact equivalents of the Russian expression перемывать косточки, according to our data, exist only in Byelorussian and Ukrainian languages, for example: перемивати кiсточкi, перамываць костачкi3. This form in particular should, in our opinion, be seen as the central, though we do not insist on it being the root of the expression. Though all the other versions are closely related in their semantics, they are not metonymically derivable from each other. This is an argument in favor of the theory that such expressions as перемывать косточки, разбирать по косточкам, трясти костями {to be washing up the bones, to be dismantling bone by bone, to shake the bones}, etc. have been created simultaneously, through use of synonymic measures, and in their different ways communicate the contents of one and the same custom containing a combination of visually similar actions. The idea of the same ritual being the source of the primary nominative act is expressively confirmed by the constant use of the following elements: 1) the lexical component кости {the bones}, 2) verbs with analogous semantics of washing, shaking, sorting out, drying, as well as 3) a constant belonging of the phrasal item to the discourses of laughter and abuse.