Russian mors and its etymological links

Extralinguistic factors play an important role in the etymological analysis of words of the thematic group "Drink names". This fact proves when defining the origin of Russian mors which has no generally accepted etymology. The word mors was first fixed in the 16th century in Domostroy (Domestic Order). Its etymology is unknown. The existing theories can be divided into two groups: the native word origin and the borrowed word origin. The followers of mors native word origin theories associate it with the verb morosit' (drizzle) or with the noun moroshka (fenberry). Late fixation and unclear origin of morosit' make it really difficult to speak about its relationship with mors. Besides, multiple questions are caused by the semantic aspect of such an etymologization. The hypothesis of the relationship of mors and moroshka seems to be more probable. This connection is motivated by the simplicity and the prevalence of the semantic model which could underlie the hypothetical formation: "the main component of a drink" ^ "a drink". However, some formal issues do not allow accepting this hypothesis. Fixed composite nominations of different kinds of morses show that moroshka was not popular as an ingredient for making this kind of a drink. The idea about the borrowed nature of the noun mors is more widespread. According to one hypothesis, this word descends from the German Moosbeere (cranberry). This suggestion is disputable because of the phonetics; besides, there are some gaps in the semantic history of the word: it is obscure how and when it developed the meaning of a drink. According to another hypothesis, the word mors was borrowed from the Romanian mursa (water and honey, juice, liquid) which, in its turn, originated from the Latin mulsa (honey drink). Semantically, this hypothesis appears to be rather probable, despite the fact the Romanian word contains the semantic component "honey" which came from Latin source, while, at first sight, Russian mors lacks it. Still, there are all reasons to state that different kinds of honey with berries were direct ancestors of Russian morses (so called "red honey" made by a special method - it is possible to note some similarities in both the formula and some aspects of making it). The way of borrowing the Romanian word mursa into Russian is still unclear: it is consistent to suggest Polish or Ukrainian mediation, but the word is not fixed in Polish, and if to speak about Ukrainian, it is borrowed there from Russian. But in spite of this, according to both formal and semantic attributes, the hypothesis about borrowing the word mors from Romanian seems to be the most probable one.

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