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Does прятки, the Russian word for the game hide and seek, come from пяток (five), пятка (heel), or something else?

My guess is пяток, because of counting from 1 to 5.

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    It's like assume that what "frivolous" is related to "five" - why on earth "r" would be gone ;)
    – shabunc
    Mar 22, 2016 at 1:01
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    I just noticed actually that прятки contains a 'р', whereas пяток and пятка don't. I think this confusion was caused as I was typing прятки into Wiktionary's search field. They don't have a page for прятки, so пятки shows up as the spelled out version. My eyes are apparently still getting used to parsing the Cyrillic alphabet, because I didn't notice the difference and clicked on пятки, leading me to пяток and пятка. :)
    – ycele
    Mar 22, 2016 at 17:55

1 Answer 1

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Neither. This word derives from the verb "прятаться", which translates as "to hide (oneself)".

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  • Vilmar is right. "pryatki" word is from "pryatat'sya". and it has nothing to do with counting and heels))) you can count up to 100)))
    – AI I
    Mar 21, 2016 at 15:44
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    So the next question is: where does салки come from? :) Mar 21, 2016 at 17:11
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    @ghostarbeiter: from салить "to grease"
    – Quassnoi
    Mar 21, 2016 at 18:38

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