Загадочное зырянское слово абутор ’медведь-самец в пору течки’ [A Mysterious Komi Zyrian Word: абутор ’male bear in heat’]

The paper investigates the Russian dialectal word абутор ’male bear in heat’ and its later fixation абуторь ’walking (not hibernating) bear’. The author proposes to discuss its new interpretation. Based on semasiological and onomasiological analysis of vocabulary extracted from various lexicographical, cultural-historical and religious-mythological sources, it is argued that the motivation for the designation could be the mythologeme ”werewolf bear”, which existed in the superstitious beliefs of the mixed population of the northern territories. An analysis of a group of words associated with superstitious and mythological ideas about werewolf as well as their widespread use in the function of swear words, made it possible to find the origin of the obscure lexeme in question in the North Russian word абатур (оботур) ’stubborn’; this word retains to a certain extent the meanings ’nasty, transverse, opposite’ in its internal structure, i.e. one who does everything in the opposite way → *reverse evil spirits, werewolf. Under the conditions of close Zyrian-Russian contacts, in the speech of Komi-Zyrian bilinguals, the word underwent adaptation to a familiar lexeme: Russian абатур → Komi абутор, cf. абутор ’nothing; what is not present’, and in this form it was documented from Russians or, rather, Russified Komi in the meaning of ’a bear in an unnatural state (during rutting or winter wakefulness)’.