Among classical literature, in everyday speech of people, in everyday communication, strange expressions emerge from unknown depths of memory. They are used, but their meanings are often lost forever.
Who does not remember the character of Nikulin, singing on stage about hares mowing "tryn-grass in the meadow." And if you look into the classics, Leskov will find: "The island where tryn grass grows." Chekhov's famous: "Either know what you live for, or all the trifles, tryn-grass." Everywhere this is a strange expression, the origins of which can no longer be traced. However, there are some very interesting hypotheses.
By dictionaries and history
If you look into the famous dictionary of Dahl or the no less famous Ushakov, and also do not forget about Ozhegov, then here "tryn-grass" has a general meaning. An expression denotes something empty, meaningless, trivial. Applied to a person, this can mean that he is not afraid of anything, ready for any nonsense - everything is just “tryn-grass”.
Of course, these definitions have a place to be, but they do not exhaust the whole problem. Since there are other no less interesting versions. Most linguists, one way or another, are inclined to believe that initially this word sounded like "tyn-grass". And what is "tyn", knows also a modern person. That is, a fence or a fence. Probably, he meant a weed with a height of tyn, standing like a fence.
If you look into the Bulgarian language, you can find here such an interesting word as "tyntrava", which means a weed growing under a fence or a weed under the fence. However, scientists unanimously admit that there is no reliable definition of this word. One can only guess, find examples in other languages of the Slavic group and draw conclusions.
However, it is worth considering separately and "grass", because without this the meaning would not be complete. As Dahl suggested, "herb" is semantically related to food or food. But not necessarily about edible grass is said in "tryn-grass". A. N. Volsky noted that "grass" can mean "poison, persecution", and hence the transition to "eat, bite, destroy" and many other meanings.
And again to the weeds
As a result of all these investigations, the etymology of the expression is supposedly explained as "under-fence weed" and "under-feed". It is possible that both options are true, since for a long time in Russia, livestock was fed with the fact that it grows just like that, especially in the summer on grazing. The cows calmly picked up everything that grows, up to some poisonous and simply bitter plants.
Hopefully this is the true meaning of the expression. And also the fact that the rest of the outdated expressions will not disappear completely from the rich, great and powerful Russian language.
