“Ножны” (sheath) and “ножницы” (scissors) in Russian through the prism of historical semantics and word formation

The purpose of the presented research is to determine the word-formation method of the historically related lexemes “ножны” (sheath) and “ножницы” (scissors), based on an analysis of their semantic composition and its changes in the history of the Russian language. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the following: 1) for the first time, the similarities and differences in the semantic composition of the two words of the same historical root, which have not previously been the subject of study, are established in a synchronic-diachronic key; 2) for the first time, evidence is presented in relation to these lexemes that the possible method of their formation, based on the semantic idea of the ancient root and further structural-semantic transformations, and in comparison with other possible derivational paths, is pluralization. The results of the research showed that the original semantics of the ancient root ‘point, sharp edge’ is preserved in the semantic structure of both lexemes, with further transformation into the semantics ‘cover, case’ for the word “ножны” (sheath) and ‘connected knives’ for the word “ножницы” (scissors), that the lexemes themselves in the history of the Russian language could have been related by word-formation relations, having lost the status of cognates over time, and that pluralization in relation to these words is the most logical path of their derivation in the Russian language, in contrast to suffixation, substantivization, or compressive word-formation.