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I had learned in a lesson that the word for Window in Russian was Окно. But later I noticed in the lyrics from Молчат дома - судно, that on the verse Окошко, Тумбочка, Кровать, Окошко stands for Window too.

Is there any difference between both or they are just two words for the same thing?


Unrelated:

Is it just me or the StackExchange Italic font messes up the Cyrillic alphabet? Кровать became Кровать in italic, the T turns to a m for some reason.

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3 Answers 3

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Окошко is a diminutive for окно.

Russian readily uses diminutive forms for some nouns in their neutral meaning, like солнышко instead of солнце, листок instead of лист, червяк instead of червь etc.

They do a similar thing in British English: "telly" < "television", "leccy" < "electricity" and so on.

For some words, their original, non-diminutive form has become archaic or obsolete over the years: ветка < ветвь, курица < кура, верёвка < вервь etc.

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    ветвь - seriously, archaic or obsolete? вервь - never heard of this word, hence i can assume is obsolete, but two other examples - are still in use, and not archaic. кура - i think is extensively in use on farm markets.
    – dEmigOd
    May 4, 2021 at 6:53
  • @dEmigOd: I agree, but "солнь" really existed. "солнце" was a diminutive itself. So "солнышко" is a diminutive of diminutive. Reference book: Лев Успенский "Слово о словах".
    – Paul
    May 4, 2021 at 11:03
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I would like to add, that "окно" but not "окошко" sometimes can be used in the meaning "period of time".

Окно — промежуток времени в расписании работ, занятий и т. п. Окно — плановый перерыв в движении поездов; Окно у учителей — незанятый урок; Окно у ракетчиков — расчётный период времени, в течение которого должна быть запущена ракета для вывода космического аппарата на определённую орбиту.

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I agree with the diminutive form, however, I would also distinguish another case where those 2 words differ is when we talk about size. In Russian Окно - is a window standard or big size, but Окошко could be quite a small window furthermore it could be even a window from toy house.

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