-

“Historical Semantics”, i. e., the study of the process of the formation of meaning, is a practical means for understanding concepts relating past cultures and their relationship with contemporary ones. By applying this approach, the present article looks into the meaning of the Russian word cqacTbe. Firstly, the etymological analysis of the word showed how, in the process of historical formation of the language, it has been formed by combining the prefix “c” with the word “qaTb’ to make a base noun. Then, in a comparison between the process of the formation of “cqacTbe” and other parallel words in a number of Indo-European languages, it has been indicated how the concept “1aCTb” (fortune, fate), in Russian ideology, paved the way to form this compound meaning. After that, the process of the developments in the meaning of “cqacTbe” has been investigated followed by the construction of modern concepts