I Spit On You

Spitting (плевать/наплевать or плюнуть) is a surprisingly important part of Russian life. It is used both literally — often in the form выплёвывать/выплюнуть (to spit out) — and figuratively. The physical act can be something of an art, for example: выплёвывать шелуху от семечек (to spit out the shell from sunflower seeds). Spitting out the shell and swallowing the seed — instead of the other way around — takes years of practice. Believe me, I know.

Плевать в лицо (to spit in someone’s face) is a terrible insult. Плевать в чайник (to spit in the kettle) is a really nasty thing to do to your neighbor in the коммуналка (communal apartment), all the more satisfying because as he drinks his tea, you know and he doesn’t. Very high yuck factor.

Figuratively, плевать connotes contempt, indifference or even inactivity: плевать на потолок (literally to spit on the ceiling) means to goof off or do nothing, despite the fact it takes a lot of skill to spit up at the ceiling and hit it with such force that it stays there and doesn’t make a return flight back into your face. All the same: После тяжёлого академического года, сын хочет только валяться на диване и плевать на потолок (After the tough school year, my son just wants to lie on the couch and do absolutely nothing).

When someone relates some exciting gossip, you can show your complete indifference with a shrug and: “Плевать мне на их сплетни” (“I could care less about their gossip”). You can even convey your utter disregard in one word, enunciated slowly, with emotion. I always thought that when Rhett Butler left Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, this is what Rhett should have said in the Russian translation: “На-плев-ать!” (“I don’t give a damn!”)

When you figuratively spit on people or their actions, you are scorning them. Он наплевал на психиатров, выбросил все лекарства и стал заниматься медитацией (He blew off the psychiatrists, threw away all the drugs and began to meditate). That’s ground floor spitting. The higher you go up to spit, the more disdain and indifference you convey: “Мне плевать на начальство с высокой колокольни!” (The hell with management, literally, “I spit on them from a high bell tower”).

And then, spitting is the Russian version of knocking on wood (although you can do that, too, just to be on the safe side). To do the ritual correctly, you spit three times over your left shoulder. If you can’t actually come up with the spit or aren’t in an appropriate place — say, if you’re sitting in good seats at the Bolshoi Theater — you just turn your head to the left and make the sound of spitting: Тьфу тьфу тьфу! You can even spit three times on the internet: just write ТТТ.

You can also make that sound to indicate potential spitting. Say you’re at a restaurant for an after- Bolshoi snack and your date suggests something you loathe, like escargots. You say: “Тьфу, гадость!” (“Yuck! How disgusting!”)

You can also use тьфу на тебя, which is a notch higher than плевать на тебя in the disdain department. It’s also hard to translate, as journalists discovered in May when the magnate Alisher Usmanov taped some video comments to oppositional leader Alexei Navalny. Usmanov concluded the second one with Тьфу на тебя, which sounds very Boris and Natasha when rendered literally: “I spit on you.” In English it might be: “The hell with you!” Or “Damn you to hell!” Well, something like that. Only a bit yuckier. Like, say, spit on a ceiling.