concept
Your Excellency
your excellency
also: ваше-ство, ваше превосходительство
The mandatory honorific for officials of the higher grades under the imperial Table of Ranks, used here by the narrator toward the general with mock-deference.
Reading notes
- Something Serious §9 Excellency
Prevoskhoditelstvo, the honorific reserved for the top four civil ranks; usurping it (as a mere state councillor might) was a recognizable petty vanity Chekhov mocks elsewhere in his rank-obsessed officialdom sketches.
- The Guardian §3 your excellency
The obligatory honorific for a civil or military official of the higher ranks under the Table of Ranks; its repetition through the story marks the narrator's exaggerated, half-mocking deference to the blustering general.
- A Fragment §2 Your Excellency
Ваше превосходительство, the mandatory honorific for officials of the third and fourth grades of the Table of Ranks. Kozerogov imagines even the birds addressing him by it -- the joke that structures the whole diary.
Mentioned in 84 works (288 mentions)
Untitled Play (Bezottsovshchina / "Platonov")
Late-Blooming Flowers
Poems and Dubia (school-age and disputed juvenilia)
A Useless Victory
St. Peter's Day
Life in Questions and Exclamations
Captions for Drawings
The Album
The Grateful One
Reading (A Tale of an Old Sparrow)
The Deputy, or the Tale of How Desdemonov Lost 25 Roubles
The Fool
The Only Remedy
A Heroine of a Lady
The Crafty One
The Cat
The Liberal
On the Nail
At a Magnetism Séance
Patronage
Once a Year
A Conversation
The Lawyer's Novel
The Plain Truth
Fat and Thin
Ferment of Minds
The Examination for Rank
Ladies and Gentlemen, Townsfolk (Господа обыватели)
Pictures from the Recent Past
Incongruous Thoughts
The Newest Letter-Writer's Guide
A Holiday Obligation
The Wedding with the General (a story)
They Abolished It!
A Living Chronology
A Horsy Name
A Personage
Murder Will Out (You Can't Hide an Awl in a Sack)
The Wall
The Exclamation Mark
A Woman's Happiness
To M. M. Dyukovsky, February 1886. Moscow.
The Boredom of Life
Sufferers
The Privy Councillor
In Spring
A Defenceless Creature
Before the Eclipse
A Secret
In the Barn
The Duel
The Princess
A Dreary Story
The Steppe: The Story of a Journey
The Wood Demon
To A. S. Suvorin, 11 April 1889. Moscow.
To A. S. Suvorin, 27 November 1889. Moscow.
The Wedding
To M. N. Galkin-Vrasky, 20 January 1890. Petersburg.
To A. S. Suvorin, 28 February 1890. Moscow.
To A. S. Suvorin, 27 June 1890. Blagoveshchensk.
To A. S. Suvorin, 30 August 1891. Bogimovo.
To V. O. Kononovich, 19 February 1891. Moscow.
To V. O. Kononovich, 27 February 1891. Moscow.
The Anniversary
- §120 your excellency
- §122 your excellency
- §139 your excellency
- §141 your excellency
- §148 your excellency
- §150 your excellency
- §161 your excellency
- §206 your excellency
- §209 your excellency
- §219 your excellency
- §224 your excellency
- §229 your excellency
- §241 your excellency
- §258 your excellency
- §261 your excellency