The history of kantselyarizm ‘ruku prilozhit’ ’ and ‘rukoprikladstvo’

The article examines the history of the functioning of the stable expression “ruku prilozhit” (“have a finger in the pie”) in the Russian official language and beyond. Speech and socio-cultural sources of this combination are determined, its one-word derivatives are analyzed — “rukoprikladstvo”, “rukoprilozheniye”, “rukoprikladyvaniye” (“handwriting”). It is pointed out that the active spread of kantselyarizm “to make a hand” coincides with the active development in the 15–16th centuries of Russian “everyday law”, a close connection between the official speech of the pre-Petrine time and the spoken language. There is a gradual departure of this kantselyarizm from the official sphere, the development of figurative meanings in the texts of fiction, the source of which can be the lexico-semantic variants of the polysemantic words that make up this expression (“attach”; “hand”). The cases of playful use of the combination “ruku prilozhit” are considered, motivated by generating phrases that are not native for this expression, as a result of which new meanings are formed (‘shake hands’, ‘kiss hands’). The evolution of the functioning of the business combination “ruku prilozhit’” is closely connected with the development of the official sphere as a whole, with the development of the document as a special text reflecting the “ideology” of public administration. On the example of the history of one bureaucracy, the influence of the written language of power on the logic and principles of the development of the Russian official language is demonstrated, which intensifies with each subsequent century.