TO THE ETYMOLOGY OF RUSS. DIAL. FARBOTY CONCERNING A PATTERN OF ASSIMILATION OF LOANWORDS IN RUSSIAN

The article discusses a Russian dialectal word farboty ‘lacework’ attested in the Dictionary of Russian Dialects and in Dal’s dictionary, seeking to corroborate Dal’s suggestion that the word may be related to the loanword falbala ‘lace, frill, bordering’.  Vasmer’s dictionary identifies falbala as a late-17th century French or Italian borrowing, adducing a corrupted dialectal form kharbara, but makes no mention of farboty. These words, as well as various other corruptions (kharboty, kharbotki, khvarbotki, verboty etc.) attested across Russian dialects, have similar meanings. Given that loanwords in Russian dialects showcase numerous examples of alternations f/kh, l/r etc. as well as some instances of a stem-final epenthetic t, one can plausibly regard farboty as a possible distorted variant of falbala.