Thread: выйти

According to the dictionary, выйти means all of this:

Originally Posted by [url

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%B8[/url]]to exit, to go out
to appear, to be published
to spend, to be used up
to come off, to come out
to come, to originate
to leave, to drop out
to look, to face, to front

Too much! How can a word mean all those different things?
I don't really believe that... What would you say that it means?

How can you say what words 'get' or 'set' mean in English?
From the context of course. In the most general sense выйти means 'to go out', well, 'to walk out' to be more precise.

It used to bog my mind, likewise, how the **** could the word get, for example, have so many meanings and could a man get a grasp of all of those in his lifetime. Even now I’m not sure if I’ve grasped them after all, but it turns out one doesn’t need to do that on purpose, most of them aren’t used anyway, and those that are will eventually stick, somehow.

According to the dictionary, выйти means all of this:

it means "to turn out", too
Вышло так, что я не смог прочитать это слово.
It turned out that I couldn't read this word.

I think the good idea is not to look up equivalents, but remember the meaning of words.
Same for Russian. We use "стирать" in the next 2 meanings: to wash linen/to do laundry and the imperfective form of to wipe off/rub out. And if an American would want to translate "стирал" directly, they would be forced to use context anyway. Particularly because they use "to wash" for a good number of things, too.

According to my vocabulary word "go" in English has 10 basic meanings as a noun and 24+5+32+2=63 basic meanings as a verb (they divided basic meanings into 4 groups somehow). Plus variants inside one meaning, plus set phrases.

In English there is a system of prepositions which makes things a bit easier (go into, go before, go after...). In Russian more or less the same plus a system of cases.

Originally Posted by Johanna

According to the dictionary, выйти means all of this:

Originally Posted by [url

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%B8[/url]]to exit, to go out
to appear, to be published
to spend, to be used up
to come off, to come out
to come, to originate
to leave, to drop out
to look, to face, to front

Too much! How can a word mean all those different things?
I don't really believe that... What would you say that it means?

Word meanings evolve historically, and the way they evolve is not the same in different languages. There is no "one-to-one" correspondance between words. Therefore, it does not make too much sense to learn translations. You should rather learn how a word is used.
"to appear" is not always "выйти", it can be "выйти" only in one of its meanings. In other meanings, it can be "появиться", "возникнуть", "показаться", "выступать" etc.
"to spend" can be translated as "тратить", "расходовать", "проводить", "истощать" etc. depending on a context it is used.

Languages has different "inner logic". And from the perspective of the "Russian logic", all of the meaning you have provided above are linked with a common idea of "going out".
E.g. when a book is published, we can say "книга вышла" (book went out). But we can also say "книга опубликована". "Вышла" is a more colloquial expression here. If the time (e.g. imagine the time which was assigned for an interview) is used up, we can say "время вышло" (time went out), since there is no more time I can find for you. But we can also say "время закончилось" or "время истекло" with exactly the same meaning. BTW, "истекло" roughly means "flowed out" because of association of time with flowing water.
So, just learn how words are used in sentences. Read more and try to understand the "inner logic" of a language.