Intimacy

The word 'intimate' was first mentioned in Russian in the first half of the 18th century. Before that, it was borrowed from Polish, where it began to be used as a loanword from Latin - intimus (internal). For example, in the 18th century there was even a special profession - cryptographer, which received its name from the Latin root 'intimus' - that is, chief. Therefore, in our time, the word 'encryptor' is familiar to few people, but the word 'intimate' has firmly entered our everyday vocabulary as a designation of something purely personal and closed to prying eyes. In historical terms, it is easy to explain its origin: once upon a time it denoted a type of love relationship between man and God, which, naturally, was associated with the religious cult and sacrament of the church. By the way, if we turn to the etymological dictionary, we can see that it was transferred to the Russian language in the form of intimate - as a type of intimacy. Moreover, the emphasis in the word 'intimacy' was initially placed precisely on the internal, family nature of these relationships - from personal, intimate to family, intra-family. In other words, the main seme of this word is closed, secret, but by no means personal and self-aware. Currently, there are several options for using this word with different lexical connotations: intimacy is something related to bed, sexual relations, and intimacy is something deeply personal, intimate, serious, and significant. The situation is the same with this word: among its synonyms you can find both simply intimate relationships and their certain degree or form. That is why the word 'intimacy', which is found on the Internet - in the context of discussing various publications, events, people, articles - often means something completely absurd, shameful, unsuccessful and useless. For example, 'girlish modesty' or 'a reason to hide something'. Accordingly, such articles may be the subject of such name-calling as 'an article about a person's intimate lifestyle' or, conversely, show the intimate part of someone's reputation or evaluate something as unkempt or indecent.