The Year in Words

Every year in Russia, academic groups and language lovers look at all the new words and phrases that have appeared in the language over the last 12 months and vote for слово года (word of the year) or слова и выражения года (words and expressions of the year). As I write this, things are just heating up in the virtual voting booths. So it’s a good time to look back at the Russian year in words.

It wasn’t a very happy year, word-wise or reality-wise. January gave us three words that now seem like the utterance of Cassandra describing the year to come: Левиафан (Leviathan, a film that showed the corruption of the Russian system); Шарли (Charlie, from the shooting at Charlie Hebdo); and мусорный рейтинг (junk rating, what the Russian economy got from Standard & Poors). And that’s been pretty much 2015 in a nutshell: corruption, terrorism and economic woes.

February gave us a respite from our troubles with the brilliant годовасик-тугосеря — a phrase apparently coined by a Mom to describe her one-year-old child (годовасик) who had problems with constipation (тугосеря – made from the word туго, tight, and серить, to poop, usually used in reference to animals). Brilliant!

But March was grim again. This is when the phrase православный талибан (Orthodox Christian Taliban) began to be used to describe people who prohibit or destroy anything that оскорбляет чувства верующих (insults the feelings of religious believers). Another phrase tagged this month was атмосфера ненависти (atmosphere of hatred). No wonder.

The next month brought April showers and comic relief. When the Night Wolves, tough-looking biker friends of President Putin, decided to ride into Germany, they were stopped in Poland and complained: “Обыскивали тщательно, каждый носок и косметичку” (“They searched us thoroughly, every sock and cosmetic bag”). Pundits and cartoonists had a field day.

May’s expression of the month was cморщенные женщины (wrinkled women), what children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov says women are by the age of 27 in some parts of Russia. That somehow explained why it was okay for a 17-year-old girl to be forced into matrimony with a 57-year-old man who appeared to be still married to his first wife — presumably because she’ll be a dried up old hag in 10 years.

In June it was not marriage but шпроты (sprats) that obsessed us. The Duma decided that those beloved smoky, oily tinned fish from Estonia and Latvia should be banned as a health hazard.

In July Russians took a break from their problems to talk nonstop about американская учительница (American teacher) Jennifer Fichter. Getting 22 years in prison for sleeping with several of her underage students struck folks here as the most outrageous miscarriage of justice imaginable — worse than a 17-year-old bride. Go figure.

In August, however, we returned to our difficult year with imported сыр (cheese) being bulldozed and my personal favorite — запрещёнка — a slangy coined word for forbidden food, i.e., food under Russian sanctions. This was the month I learned to ask the saleswomen for кусочек белорусского Пармезана, пожалуйста (a piece of Belarusian Parmesan, please) — almost without laughing.

September: беженцы (refugees).

October: голубь с железными крыльями (dove with iron wings), which is how President Putin described himself. Pundits and cartoonists rejoice again.

November: удар в спину (knife in the back), what Putin said Turkey did to Russia when it shot down its fighter plane.

The preliminary word lists are hard to read this year. But for every grim нежелательная организация (undesirable organization) there is курортозамещение (resort substitution), to go along with импортозамещение (import substitution) and обестуреченный (deturkified).

Надежда умирает последней (hope springs eternal).