From the history of one of the victorious errors (the verb dovlet’ in modern newspaper text)

Abstract

The article deals with the history of the semantic evolution of the verb dovlet’ (to sufce) in Russian language and the functioning of the word in modern newspaper journalism. The history of borrowing and a gradual rethinking of the verb since the 17th till the 21st century is considered. The article presents the data of linguistic dictionaries, in which different interpretations of the word are accompanied by stylistic marks. It compares language introspection, reflected in the educational publications on the topic of linguistics, to the speech practice of “RossiyskayaGazeta”, “Kommersant”, “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, “Novaya Gazeta”, “Zavtra” (2017–2018) and marks the proceeding semantic extension of the verb. The author proves the high importance of journalists’ use of words for the formation of the society’s speech culture.