The pages of Russian literature contain a large number of old Russian and foreign words that are out of use or almost out of use and require special explanation of what dictionaries should serve for, which, however, do not always cope with this duty. Inaccuracies are usually caused by the so-called "historical and etymological puns", as V. V. Vinogradov once called semantic convergence of words based on random consonances (Vinogradov V. V. Reading the Old Russian text and historical and etymological puns / / Voprosy yazykoznaniya, 1968, N 1). We want to tell you about one such case in this article. It's about the word bourbon. * This work was supported by RGNF N 00-04-00251a. page 103 The first linguistic attempts to examine the history of this word were made on relatively limited material starting in 1865 (Otin E. S., Maksimova N. V. Stylistic functions of proper names in V. M. Garshin's stories // East-Ukrainian linguistic collection. Donetsk, 1998. Issue 4; Dobrodomov I. G. Bourbon and Bourbons / / Russian language at school. 1998. N 6). A vivid literary portrait of bourbon was given by A. S. Afanasyev-Chuzhbinsky in the essay "Bourbon": "In the cavalry regiments of former times, especially where not expensive uniforms were worn, such as in the lancers and dragoons, it was not uncommon to meet officers from the "stick academy", or the so-called Bourbons, who, coming from soldiers, sometimes reached the level of and of considerable rank, while remaining the same soldiers throughout the century. Bourbon, whether he was a guardsman or an army officer, always strictly kept to the sphere of his type and never changed his habits, learned in the barracks or in the stable, to neglect the soldier, was afraid of the officer, pulled himself to attention in front of the senior and crushed the subordinate, with all the weight of a falsely understood discipline " (Essays on the past by A. Chuzhbinsky, St. Petersburg, 1863. Part 1). No less vivid is the satirical portrait of bo ... Read more