TO THE HISTORY OF THE WORD MESTNOST’

This article is devoted to the history of Russian word mestnost’ (‘area, location, terrain’). It is pointed out that dating of this word’s origin in Russian to the 18th century is in fact erroneous, and that actually, the word emerged as late as the early 19th century: 1) used in the sense ‘local color’, which became obsolete by mid-19th century, and 2) as a military term denoting ‘terrain’, which was gradually assimilated by the language and took on the meaning ‘area’ in the general sense.