Wasisdas

Pharmacy with wasisdas (customers are standing on the street)

Vasisdas (obsolete, from German. Was ist das ? , “what is it?” Through French vasistas , “window” ^[1] ) - a window in the store’s wall, with an opening sash or grille ^[2] , intended for sale. This meaning is also associated with the humorous nickname of a German in the Russian Empire engaged in trade ^[3] . In the French vernacular, the use of this word in the form of vagistas is registered ^[2] .

In the Middle Ages, glass remained expensive, because the window of the store was closed with shutters, from which a store was created during the operation of the store, while buyers were on the street. Only in the XVIII century, with the cheapening of glass and the creation of glazed facades, trade moved into the premises (window-dressing made of sheet glass , like the modern ones, began to appear only in the second half of the XIX century) ^[4] .

Small stores in Russia continued to use wasisdas in the 19th century, but the term almost disappeared from the Russian language by the end of the 19th century and was preserved only through the use of the word in the famous stanza “ Eugene Onegin ” ^[5] :

... And a bakery, a neat German, In a paper cap, more than once Already opened his wasisdas. A. S. Pushkin Eugene Onegin. 1, 35

Here, Pushkin informs us that the baker managed to make several sales and uses the pun between Germanism in French French. vasistas and the slang name of the German ^[6] . A. E. Anikin suggests the role of Pushkin in the fact that the borrowed French word began to be written in the German manner ^[7] . It is known that in Pushkin’s times, the Germans of St. Petersburg engaged in the sale of bread replaced the lower part of the shop window with a copper door that opened out, which, when the buyer knocked on it, was opened: it went down, like a miniature drawbridge, and thus served as a kind of counter ^{[2 ]} .