# Russia

Pronunciation: say "RUSH-uh" /ˈɹʌʃə/

## Proper noun

1. A transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia, officially the Russian Federation, with its capital and largest city at Moscow.
   - Simple: A large country that stretches across Eastern Europe and northern Asia, with Moscow as its capital.
   - _Russia spans eleven time zones, from Kaliningrad in the west to Kamchatka in the east._
   - _Trade talks between Russia and its neighbors continued through the winter._
2. The Russian state under the tsars: the Tsardom of Russia, or Muscovy, from 1547, and the Russian Empire from 1721 until the revolution of 1917.
   - Simple: The country ruled by the tsars, from 1547 until the revolution of 1917.
   - _Peter the Great turned Russia into a major European power in the early eighteenth century._
   - _In 1867, Russia sold Alaska to the United States for about seven million dollars._
3. A widely used name for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, although strictly the Russian republic (the RSFSR) was only one of the union's several constituent republics.
   - Simple: A common name for the Soviet Union, the large communist state that existed from 1922 to 1991.
   - _Throughout the Cold War, Russia and the United States raced to build ever larger nuclear arsenals._
   - _Russia launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957._

## Noun

6. Ellipsis of Russia leather: a durable, scented leather tanned with bark and treated with birch oil, used especially in bookbinding. — Ellipsis of Russia leather.
   - Simple: Short for Russia leather: a tough, bark-tanned leather with a rich smell from birch oil, once popular for binding books.

## Proper noun

4. One of the East Slavic lands that grew out of Kievan Rus, usually reckoned as Great Russia (Russia), White Russia (Belarus), and Little Russia (Ukraine). *(dated)*
   - Simple: Any one of the East Slavic lands that grew out of old Kiev, such as Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine.
   - _Nineteenth-century writers often divided the eastern Slavs into three Russias of common descent._
   - _Each Russia in that older scheme traced its origins to the Kievan state._
5. The medieval East Slavic realm ruled from Kiev, now usually called Kievan Rus. *(dated)*
   - Simple: An early Slavic state from the Middle Ages, centered on the city of Kiev.

## Origin

Russia, a doublet of Rossiya, was first recorded in English in the 1390s, taken from Medieval Latin Russia, which was based on Old East Slavic Русь (Rusĭ), at first the name of a group of Varangians who in the 9th century made their home near Kiev and came to rule Kievan Rus. Rusĭ probably came from Old East Norse *roþs-, meaning "related to rowing", by way of Proto-Finnic *roocci, and goes back through Old Norse róðr ("rowing") to Proto-Indo-European *h₁reh₁- ("to row").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/russia (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).