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This article analyzes the lexical meaning and pronunciation of the word “ovoshenny”, found in the artistic and business texts of the 19th century, including the comedy “Revizor” by N. V. Gogol. This adjective could be found only in the “Russian Dictionary of the 18th Century”, but without interpretation and stressed syllable information. In some comments to the comedy “Revizor”, this word is interpreted as “petty shop”, but the author takes issue with this interpretation. The analysis of the adjective “ovoshenny” rests on publicistic and business texts of the 19th century. On the basis of these texts, the author comes to the conclusion that the adjective “ovoshenny” indicates a variety of food products. And the adjective “petty” indicates the retail sale of goods, including industrial.

The author assumes that the stress in the word “ovoshenny”, whose pronunciation in the theatrical practice of the 19th century, as a rule, was distorted in various ways, most likely falls on the second syllable, which corresponds to the pronunciation of the other words with the root “ovosh’/ ovosh” found in the language dictionary of the 18th century.