What does “blessed” mean: origin, definition, synonyms

Etymology

In the Old Church Slavonic language there was a word “bologo”, which meant happiness. Only its short-vocal form “good” has survived to this day, which has been preserved in the form of a noun and as part of individual words (“bless”, “favor”, “thank”). Also in the Old Church Slavonic vocabulary there was a cognate verb “blazhiti”, meaning “to honor”, ​​“to make happy”, “to praise”. The word under discussion was part of the paradigm of this part of speech as a passive participle. Therefore, the one who was praised was called blessed. To this day, this meaning has been transformed, and the word itself has migrated from one part of speech to another - from a participle it has become an adjective, as well as a noun.

What does the word “blessed” mean today?

Ksenia Petersburgskaya

Photo: Sofrino.ru
A great misfortune helped Ksenia Grigorievna Petrova become one of the most beloved saints in Russia - when she was only 26 years old, her beloved husband died. And Ksenia left her wealthy, comfortable life in high society, dressed in her husband’s suit and began to tell everyone that Ksenia had died, and her husband Andrei Fedorovich, here he was, was alive.

She distributed her property to the poor, gave her home to a relative, and filled out all the documents as if she were completely sane. And all her life, performing the feat of foolishness for the sake of Christ, she helped those who were having a hard time. At the same time, she had neither things nor a roof over her head. And the Lord rewarded her with the gift of foresight and insight into the souls of people. She saved people from misfortunes and troubles many times.

We recommend reading: Prayers of Xenia of St. Petersburg

Happy

This word calls a person not just in a state of happiness, but in its highest degree. He has comprehended the meaning of his destiny, feels the fullness of life, inner satisfaction with the conditions of his existence. The epithet under discussion is applied to a person when his feeling of happiness has reached its peak and cannot even be described in words. The noun “bliss” derived from it has approximately the same semantics.

Most often the word is used in religious literature. For example, in translations of the Bible into Russian, instead of the Greek “makarios”, Hebrew “ashre”, and Latin “beatus” there is the Russian “blessed”. The meaning of the word “holy fool” is more familiar to the modern reader, so he may get confused. Take, for example, the famous lines from the Gospel of Matthew, which say that “blessed are the hungry and thirsty for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Although we are talking about happy people here, we can conclude that we are talking about mentally ill people.

The verb “to please” has a slightly different connotation of meaning - “to satisfy”, “to fulfill all desires”.

What does the word “blessed” mean?

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In fact, this title, remarkable in its essence and great in nature, comes from the Greek word “makarios” - happy, doing good. And it has several meanings:

1. A Christian who leads a pious lifestyle, living according to God's commandments.
2. A saint who performed the feat of foolishness in the name of Christ and became famous for this feat.
3. In Russia, this name was used to designate some European saints who did not perform the feat of foolishness, and their veneration began even before the separation of Catholicism and Orthodoxy in 1054. These saints are in the Orthodox calendar and the name “blessed” denotes their unique position (Blessed Augustine, Blessed Jerome)
4. An adjective that serves as an addition to the titles of the heads of some Churches.
5. Happy man.

Saint

In this meaning, the word refers to outdated vocabulary. Blessed is the one whom the church considers to be already saved and in heaven. In Latin, the process of canonization is called beatification. This means that such a person will be revered as close to God. The next step is canonization. For example, this title was awarded to the theologians Augustine and Jerome. Among her contemporaries, the most famous is Mother Teresa the Blessed. The meaning of the word “saint” can be determined not only by the context, but also by the capital letter with which this epithet is written.

Who hasn’t heard about St. Basil, in whose honor the temple in Moscow is named? He was canonized and is highly revered in the Russian Orthodox Church. He was born right on the porch in 1469 in the vicinity of Moscow. Almost all his life, Vasily walked completely naked and slept in the open air all year round. For this they called him Blessed, because they believed that he received a revelation from above and taught the people morality with such behavior. It is believed that he was the only person whom Ivan the Terrible was afraid of. After the death of Vasily, he ordered the construction of a cathedral on the site of his burial and named the temple after him.

Beatitudes

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Every Orthodox Christian knows the beatitudes, which are pronounced by the whole world during the liturgy. These are the commandments that the Lord set forth in his sermon on the hill in Galilee. The nine commandments that should make a person happy, in our everyday understanding, do not in any way correlate with the earthly understanding of happiness. Because according to the commandments, blessed are those who cry, those who are persecuted, those who are poor in spirit. But in the Christian understanding, this is precisely what brings happiness and fullness of life.

Therefore, blessed means happy in the highest, heavenly sense of the word.

Holy Fool

In this case it is a noun. In order to describe a fool, a stupid or mentally ill person, the lexeme “blessed” is used. The meaning of the word has a negative connotation, although it is used mainly not to offend, but when it is necessary to gently emphasize the presence of a mental illness in a person or some kind of strangeness in him.

Most likely, the lexical meaning of the word “blessed” acquired a negative connotation due to the fact that mentally abnormal people were considered saints. They were credited with the gift of prophecy and higher insight, and their emotional state was explained by the fact that they were supposedly communicating with God and were in a prophetic trance. A striking example of this is the same St. Basil the Blessed. In the modern world, such people are usually sent to mental hospitals. And earlier, when such a field of medical science as psychiatry did not yet exist, they thought that this is how a person close to God should behave.

This meaning gave life to the noun “whim.” This is what they call an absurd whim, a crazy idea, a whim. Although it does no harm, it is stupid and useless in its essence, just like the holy fools who walk without clothes.

Here are some interesting facts about just one polysemic word.

Who else is called blessed?

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We can give examples of heads of Churches that have this title. For example:

• His Beatitude Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem and all Palestine - Theophilus;
• His Beatitude Archbishop of Athens and all Greece - Christadoulus;
• His Beatitude Metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland - Sawa.

That is, blessed is a loud Christian title.

In Russia, famous blessed people who are revered and loved by all Orthodox Christians are, for example, Xenia of St. Petersburg and St. Basil the Blessed.

blessed is:

blessed blessed adj., used. compare often Morphology: blissful , blissful , blissful , blissful ; more blessed ; adv. blissfully 1. Blissful is a person who feels absolutely happy. 2. A time, events, etc. are called blissful if during this period you feel absolute peace and happiness.
Blissful moment. | He often recalled those blissful days in Sochi. | Two days have passed since our blissful trip to the lake.

3.
Blessed is that which expresses and is filled with happiness and well-being.
His face lit up with a blissful smile. | A blissful feeling of peace came over me. |

adv.

He fell asleep blissfully.

4. noun
Blessed used to be called a deeply religious person who left his family and property and wandered around the world in the name of Christ. People believed that the blessed ones had the gift of prophecy. = holy fool 5. A person who behaves strangely and wonderfully is sometimes called
blessed He was a blessed man. | People considered Anna blessed.

6. When you are
in blissful ignorance , you do not know, do not suspect anything bad;
the expression is used ironically. His mother was blissfully unaware.

7. When you mention someone, you say
blessed memory , you want to speak with respect about someone who is no longer alive.
They ordered a prayer service in honor of the blessed memory of Father Seraphim.

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language by Dmitriev. D. V. Dmitriev. 2003.

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dic.academic.ru

In the dictionary Complete accentuated paradigm according to A. A. Zaliznya

blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful, blissful blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed blissful, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed

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Synonyms

The dictionary of Russian synonyms edited by N. Abramov contains the following words with similar meaning: “happy”, “fool”, “heavenly”, “man of Christ”, “holy”, sweet”, “ever blessed”, “blessed”, “cloudless” ", "golden", "holy fool", "fool", "fool", "man of God", "holy fool".

In the dictionary of Trishin V.N. the following synonyms for the word “blessed” are given: “mad”, “holy fool”, “fool for fool”, “fool”, “insane”, “man of Christ”, “happy”, “sweet”, “ holy”, “bright”, “heavenly”, “joyful”, “golden”, “golden”, “fool”, “fool”, “all-blessed”, “noble-minded”, “noble-minded”, “blessed”, “prosperous” , “good”, “prosperous”, “prosperous”, “mad”, “cloudless”.

Origin of the word

The word “blessed” was borrowed from the Old Church Slavonic language, where it had a meaning associated with the verbs “honor”, ​​“praise”. According to another version, the word is derived from the noun “good,” which means “happiness, goodness.”

The popular dictionary of the Russian language, edited by Guskov A.P., claims that the meaning of “stupid” or “foolish” (that is, a negative connotation) arose from the original meaning of the word “blessed” - “holy”. Saints were considered holy fools, or mentally abnormal people who, as religious people believed, possessed the gift of foresight.

From the age of fifteen, he became known as the holy fool who walks barefoot winter and summer..., gives samples to those he loves, and speaks mysterious words that are taken by some to be predictions.

Tolstoy L.N. “Childhood”

Literature

• Igum.
  Andronik (Trubachev) [www.pravenc.ru/text/149361.html Blessed] // Orthodox Encyclopedia. Volume V. - M.: Church-scientific, 2002. - P. 352. - 752 p. — 39,000 copies. — ISBN 5-89572-010-2