The Russian language is as rich as no other language in the world. The variety of dialects, expressions, archaisms and historicisms that permeates the speech of a Russian person is unimaginable for a foreigner. Sometimes it is not easy to understand the meaning of certain words that have come out of circulation. But the Internet helps …
Etymology of the word rohlya
In order to understand the deep semantics of the word rokhlya, you need to look into the origins, into the origin of this word.
The “ancestor” of this word is the Ukrainian word “rukh”, which meant “movable property.” Having succumbed to the transformation, the word “Rubbish” appeared in ancient Russia, which had the same meaning - “any movable things, property”.
It is worth noting that there is an opinion according to which the word "junk" has the same root with the word "destroy", which originally meant "to activate". Do you feel connected?
Nevertheless, “ruin” and “ruh (fuck)” have changed their semantics: in modern Russia, only things that are not needed, things that need to be disposed of: broken electrical appliances, furniture, clothes are called junk. Often replaced by the word "trash".
Further along this etymological chain, we come to the word "loose", an adjective that means "wrinkled, flabby, dead, fragile health." Again, as with property - "not corresponding to its original qualities, unnecessary."
Old Slavic rohly, which was used in relation to people, was transformed into the noun "rohlya". Which, if you look at the very beginning, has almost the same meaning.
Rokhley is called a person who is not clear why he is here: clumsy, weak, absent-minded, incapable of any action, such as junk - unnecessary in a certain place.
The word rohlya in modern colloquial speech
The word rohlya came out of mass intra-speech use, you can hear it only in some dialects. It is colloquial with a dismissive connotation, but, nevertheless, it was often used in fiction: “He doesn’t know how to treat anyone to a native. I was born so bad, my father Milon. " D. I. Fonvizin, "Minor", 1782
Used close words: boob, muddlehead, brake, slob, simpleton, nonsense (rare)