Russian Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Russian language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
In literature, I can read some type of earlier-times custom, that women машут платочком to say goodbye (waive with scarf?)
Which piece of fabric did they waive and is there a special hidden original meaning - in Russian, many things have symbolic meaning.
This is not specifically Russian.
Here's a quote from Wikipedia:
From the late 18th century white handkerchiefs were waved, generally by women (men usually waved their hats), to demonstrate approval at public events such as processions or political rallies
This has nothing to do with neither headdress (which also called платок in Russian) nor with Russian traditions apart from fashion among westernized circles of Russian aristocracy. Even more specifically - Russian aristocracy was under a heavy French influence - and you can a lot of references for waving a handkerchief in the French literature of the XIX century.
Back to the linguistic part of the question - there's no symbolic meaning of any kind, it's just that in modern Russian "махать платочком" has an ironical (yet this irony is of a kind nature) connotation.
Something like:
Ты вот уедешь на поезде, а я буду стоять на пероне и махать платочком. И вся рыдать.
As other people mentioned in comments, платочек is a handkerchief. It is a a usual thing in Russia to waive a hand or some piece of apparel (e.g. a hat) to the person leaving.
In case of a woman I can imagine that she had used the handkerchief to dab her eyes and then waived the thing she had in hands.
