The word century in the Russian language has several meanings. Let's pay attention to three of them (in our opinion, the most important ones):: 1) "century", 2)" epoch, a period of time characterized by something", 3)"life, the period of existence of someone". In the general literary language, of course, the first of them is the main one. In dialects, the third comes to the fore.
The meaning of" life "in the word century is also given by dictionaries of the literary language, but it is interpreted differently: in the dictionary edited by D. N. Ushakov - with the mark "colloquial", in the dictionaries of S. I. Ozhegov and V. V. Lopatin and L. E. Lopatina-without litter, in MAC-with the mark " in the literary language only with the definition": my century, in its own time. We can only say that in the literary language this is a rather limited use associated with certain contexts.
The connection between the concepts and lexemes of vek-zhizn is not just a part of Russian culture. As he writes in the book " Constants. Dictionary of Russian Culture " Yu. S. Stepanov, "the very concept of" century, century " saeculum in Rome was determined by the life span of one generation."
In many Russian dialects, the words century and life are synonymous. For example: People have lived for a century. That's how life was lived. Maeshsya vek-ot. I've been desperate all my life. See also the literary and dialect versions of proverbs: To live life is not a field to cross. A century to live -
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to go to the field; To live a century is not to plow the field. However, there are semantic and stylistic differences between these words. The century in this sense has a high stylistic coloring, which is also evident in dialects, although it should be spoken carefully, since the problem of stylistic differentiation of dialect vocabulary has not yet been solved.
In dialects (in particular, Bryansk, which is recorded in the "Dictionary of Bryansk Dialects"), there is also a shade of meaning" a ...
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