NEOLOGISM — RARITY — ARCHAISM: SOME NATURAL HISTORY TERMS IN THE RUSSIAN POETIC TRADITION

 The paper considers names of plants, animals, gems, ointments, incenses and spices in the Russian poetic tradition. The first part contains listss of exact and non-exact synonyms, homonyms and variations in spelling, pronunciation and grammar. The further sections include some examples from such representative sources as Chersonida by Semyon Bobrov, the sample of poesia docta, and Slovar’ ruchnoi natural’noi istorii (Manual Dictionary of Natural History) by Vasiliy Lyovshin. These and other similar texts contain many rare and specific nominations in the analyzed field. Some of them appear in a certain period as neologisms and then, after short or even single use, become archaisms. The well-known examples are анчар ‘anchar’ (Pushkin and his sources),гемасагара ‘hemasagara’ (Gogol after Thomas Moore and William Jones), синель (lilac, Tyutchev) etc., the new ones are циана ‘cornflower’, чиндар or чандар ‘Populus alba’ etc. In some cases several types and brands of goods (tea, wine, cigars etc) can be added to the discussed lexical group.