POSBON, the whole story

I did find out what the name of the funeral home ПОСБОН stands for: Производственное объединение специализированного бытового обслуживания населения

Here comes the full translation: Production Group for Specialized Life Services for the Public

Life Services?

Быт (life) is a strange word in Russian. It means everyday life, as in slogging through. Small towns still tend to have a Дом Быта, a building full of small businesses that cater to those annoying tasks every human faces: taking your clothes to get dry-cleaned, buying a new extension cord, getting your picture taken for a passport application, buying the specific, hard-to-find brand of cat food your vet recommends, getting the sole glued back on your shoe, etc.

Now that I re-read the above paragraph, I think I prefer the funeral homes that advertise as Ритуальные Услуги (ritual services).

Память на века

"Погребение в мавзолее-усыпальнице: скидка - 5% с предъявлением этого купона"

"Mausoleum burial: 5% off with this coupon"

This ad made me put down my fork. I'll let other people wonder about how the deceased are supposed to present coupons, or better yet, pay $26/month for a double. Here's my take on the words:

Мавзолей (mav-zo-LAY) is an obvious borrowing of the word mausoleum. The root of усыпальница (oo-si-PAL-neet-sa) is the Russian word for sleep, and the prefix means "away." It's another word for mausoleum. I'm not sure why the two are used together so often. Perhaps the pair functions as a euphemism. I've always been partial to the word склеп (sklep, or tomb). Makes me think of the mask of Agamemnon. Click the link to see a map of what sklep means in different Slavic languages.

In the same vein, I've wondered for years about ПОСБОН (POSBON), the name of a chain of funeral homes in the area where we live near Moscow. I tried to make it be an abbreviation of funeral home - похоронное бюро - but it just doesn't work. What are the "s" and the "n" doing there? I guess I could call them and ask.

I promise the next entry will be about lovely food and food words.

Vacation Vocabulary

У нас официальный конец лета - Labor Day (первый понедельник в сентябре). В армии такие дни называют DONSA - day of no scheduled activity. Почты все, кого я видела в ресторанах и кафе на острове Галвестон сегодня, были одеты в стиле island casual или resort casual. Рестораторы в туристических городках используют эти формулировки, сочетающие в себе расслабленность и небольшой шик, чтобы народ не приходил в мокрых купальниках. К сожалению, судя по пустым пляжам, многие в Хьюстоне решили ограничится staycation - то есть, дома сидели.

Унитаз

Our hot water is off for the next two weeks (a scheduled summer occurence, if you can believe it), so the other day I bought a big metal таз (taz, "basin") to fill with hot water for bathing.
My son was very approving - "I like that унитаз (oo-nee-TAZ, "toilet bowl") you bought!"

After I set him straight about the big difference between taz and unitaz, I started digging around to find out where the word came from. My usual first source (who conveniently sits across the table from me at breakfast) suggested that унитаз is short for универсальный таз (all-purpose basin). I knew - no, I had to believe - that he was wrong.

And he was!

I soon uncovered a very entertaining article on the invention of the flush toilet. The article is attributed to Twyford Bathrooms, but it isn't posted on the company's site. Twyford's site does, however, confirm that Thomas Twyford invented the "unitas" in 1883. The prefix uni- was chosen because it was the first one-piece toilet. What about -tas? I guess that was a prudent euphemism. The OED has entries for the word "tass" (meaning a cup or small goblet) dating back to the 15th century.

As the artice concludes, "The Unitas was shipped into Russia and the name UNITAS became the Russian word for WC!"

And how convenient that the trade name dovetailed so nicely with a Russian word that made the shape (if not the purpose) of the new product very clear! That's all I have to say about унитаз.

Таз, by the way, came into Russian and lots of other languages from Persian via Turkish. The OED says that the immediate ancestor of tass in English is, of course, tasse in French, but it also ultimately traces the word back to Arabic and Persian, where it meant cup or goblet.