-------- Original Message --------
Stan (and Alexey, too!):
The word 'cheryomuha' has soft* KH like in KHOLOD (cold) or
KHOLODKOVSKY (the famous entomollogist and translator of poetry
mentioned in The Gift).
The Cyrillic spelling is ЧЕРЕМУХА; since letter Ч stands for CH, it has
the same number (8) of digits as RACEMOSA (РАЦЕМОЗА); digits 4, 5, 8
the same; moreover, digit 1 (Ч) in Cyriilic cursive is spelled same
eway as Latin "R" (important! see Chekhov's 'renyxa' =чепуха,
nonsense); thus a candidate for Word Golf but impossible to complete
with intermediates retaining meaning. I tried, and some intermediates
even include МУХА (Fly) mutating to МУЗА (Muse) e.g. ЧЕРЕМУХА ->
ЧЕРЕМУЗА --> ... but this Muse tries and fails in the face of
Goddess Lingua complexity.
Note that MUHA --> MUZA is the start of the most famous (other than
KOROVA --> KORONA) Russian Wolrd Golf round that makes 'iz muhi
slona', an elephant from a fly in nine permutations: MUHA --> MUZA
-->....SLON (муха-муза-луза-лоза-поза-пора-порт-сорт-стон-слон.)
Note also that digit 4 is in fact not E but YO (E with umlaut, Ё) - the
most neglected of 33 letters of the Russian alphabet, usually printed
as E (albeit pronounced as YO, one has to know!). Neglect to YO spawned
support-groups who argue that this letter (associated also with one of
the basic Russian taboo curses, unprintable before perestroika) is
endangered and has to be always printed. YO is the only Russian letter
which must be always under emphasis, thus cherYOmukha does not
phonetically inlude mUkha.
Finally, the root is of course Greek in origin (isn't almost
everything?), from the city of Kerasous (κέρασος), modern Giresun in
Turkey, which gave us English cherry, Prunus cerasus (Latin subgenus
Cerasus), French cerise, Spanish cereza, even Russian chereshnya (bird
cherry, Prunus avium).
There are also two related American species, Padus virginiana
(chokecherry, since 2007 the Official Fruit of the State of North
Dakota) and P. serotina (black cherry), not to b onfused with Aronia
(chokeberry). A lot of Lepidoptera feed on their leaves.
Unfortunately if symbolically, a common police tear gas based on
chloracetophenone is known in Russia as 'Cheremukha' - its smell is
similar. It was used by police worldwide since 1920s but I doubt that
this Soviet name would be known to VN.
Jansy: Padus also rhymes with Gradus; more important, it hides Russian
verb "padat' ", to fall.
Victor
*[EDNote: By "soft", Victor refers to its "fricative" (throat-clearing)
quality, as apposed to "palatalization", sometimes also called softness
in Russian consonants.]