On history of entymological dictionary

The article reveals the history of creation and first publication of the Entymological Dictionary, discusses the principles of pseudoexplanation of words in aspect of possible semantization of an existing word. The author formulates the conditions of ‘entymological' semantization: notional and formational soundness, low cognizability, semantic structure of a word that permits to separate the meaning into specific components and combine it in specific ways in order to create a humorous effect. The most frequent elements of explanation in the Entymological Dictionary are the following: ‘big', ‘small', ‘human', ‘man', ‘woman', ‘amateur', ‘female', ‘participant', ‘result', etc., because they denote the most important system-creating relations in Russian worldview, and create the basis of ‘order' in dictionary.