Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/493

Several Russian words recognized by American lexicographers mean other things in Bohemian. For instance, duma (sometimes spelled douma) = a council; specifically, the Russian parliament created in 1905; but in Bohemian duma = thought, meditation, whence dumka, already discussed. Kvas (also spelled, in English, kvass or quass) means, in Russian, a thin, sour, barley or rye beer very popular in Russia, and also sauerkraut juice or the brine of cucumber pickles, both of which are drunk; the Bohemian word kvas = primarily leaven, sour dough, a ferment, and is only rarely used for one of the Metchnikoffian slops now being popularized in America. Troika signifies a typical Russian carriage drawn by three horses abreast, also a team of horses so harnessed; in Bohemian trojka is simply the figure 3, or the trey in cards, a meaning ignored in our dictionaries. Kopeck (kopek, copeck) = a Russian fractional coin. The very similar Czech kopec, a hill, and its diminutive kopeček, are unknown in English, whereas most Americans would guess, if they did not comprehend, the meaning of “he isn’t worth a kopek;” and, in view of the value of Russian money not long ago, the phrase might be suggested as a parlor version of the proverbial “he isn’t worth a darn.” Zemstvo is known in the Russian significance of an elective district or provincial administration; in Bohemian the word means, collectively, the proprietors of the land, or, simply, landed property. Ukase (Russ., ukas) has become familiar as synonymous with command, proclamation, imperial order; in Czech úkaz = a showing, phenomenon, an appearance, event (verb ukázati, to show, point out, indicate.) Zastrugi (pl. of Russ. zastruga) appears in the latest Webster as meaning furrows made on the shore by water, grooves or furrows formed in snow by the action of the wind and running parallel with the direction of the wind. The Standard Dictionary gives a briefer definition to the same effect. In Czech, a zástruha is a shaving, a thin slice, say of cabbage preparatory to making sauerkraut. Vodka (literally “little water”—and, by the way, the o is not equivalent to ah, as many of our guides to pronunciation would have us believe) is a Russian beverage corresponding to the American white mule; in Bohemian the same word is simply a diminutive of voda, water. Kumiss (or koumiss) is of Russian, more remotely Mongolian origin, as is the nauseating mess for which it stands: a fermented, intoxicating beverage made by the Tatars from mare’s or camel’s milk, largely used in some parts of Russia. The word is foreign to the Czech vocabulary, and,