Self-evaluation lexis in the history of the Russian language: obedience

The article describes the way the word obedience originated in the Russian literary language. The author points out that this word belongs to self-evaluation lexis, along with such lexemes as pride, meekness, humility, etc. The author holds the hypothesis that ethic evaluation in the Russian linguistic world image is formed on the basis of extreme (paired) nominations, which invariably suppose a third intermediate element that reflects most vividly the linguistic-cultural preferences of a Russian. The lexeme obedience becomes the third element in the self-evaluation extreme pair pride - meekness. The analysis is based on the vocabulary data including the one of "The National Dictionary of the Russian Language".