Substandard Lexis in the Dynamics of Its Dictionary Description

The article focuses on the diffi culties of describing the substandard lexis in the explanatory dictionary. Changes related to the dynamics of its functioning in the Russian language are studied on the material of a new explanatory dictionary of the middle type referring to other dictionaries. The analysed short fragment, composed of dictionary entries beginning with the letter “Ж” [Zh], shows the main trends in the functioning of the substandard lexis. On the one hand, there is a trend of a certain part being withdrawn from active use, on the other hand, there is also a tendency of improving the stylistic coloring of the words, shifting to the sphere of the colloquial language. At the same time, comparing the materials of dictionaries of different times and wide involvement of the Russian National Corpus (RNC) shows the ambiguity of these trends, the need to take into account various factors, including extralinguistic ones, when deciding on the preservation of a substandard lexeme in the dictionary or exclusion from it, replacing the label Prost. (Substandard) marked Razg. (Colloquial) or a combination of marks, etc. These factors include the belonging of a word to a certain systemic formation (word-formation nest, synonymic row, etc.).