Historical perspective on the word gospoda as a form of address
... related forms of address: damy i gospoda, gospoda-tovarischi, and other noun-noun and adjective-noun collocations (gospoda publika uvažaemye gospoda). It draws on examples from literature to demonstrate that although, contrary to popular belief, the honorific damy i gospoda is not a neologism of the end of the 20th century, it was marginal to pre-revolutionary speech. It is also shown that, albeit rarely, the word gospoda was used before the Russian Revolution to address a mixed company. Abandoned ...
