Words, Interesting Russian Words
The Russian language contains several interesting words with regard to the way that they sound or that they are put together. We offer here a representation of some of them.
Interesting Russian Words, (Unfortunately, this web format does not display Cyrillic fonts correctly).
babushka, in Russian this is the word for grandmother. In Polish the same word is a scarf worn around the head, usually by elderly women, or "grandmothers".
samolyot, samo means self, lyot is from the verb that means to fly. Something that flies by itself, or an airplane.
vertolyot, (helicopter), First, it is vertOlyot, not vertilyot; second, etymologically speaking (and in the Russian speaker minds) it
is something that has a rotor. It does not have anything to do with "vertical",
but is related to the Russian verb "vertet', vertet'sya" - to revolve, to spin, and, ultimately, to Latin verto- (ibid.).
lunatik, In Russian this is a person who walks when the moon (luna) is out, or a sleepwalker. It does not mean someone who does not have full possession of his or her mind, as it does in English.
lunatizm, Similarly in Russian this is the practice or phenomenon of walking when the moon (luna) is out, or a sleepwalking. It does
not speak of a state or condition of insanity, as the word lunacy connotes in English.
angina, The Russian word for tonsillitis. It does not refer to a heart defect.
smoking, This is the Russian word for dinner jacket, and does not refer to the bad habit of puffing on tobacco.
magazin, This is not a periodical, as it is in English, but rather a store, where merchandise is sold. The Russian word for periodical is
zhurnaal, which is from the French word journal.
gulag, Russian acronym for Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey i kolonii, The Chief Administration (or
Directorate) of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies. The gulag was a vast former Soviet labor and prison camp system with camps stretching all over the
expanse of the Soviet Union. Government dissenters of almost every kind were sent to the gulag.
perestroika, Literally, the word means reconstruction, but during the presidency of Michael Gorbachev, the word took on a special meaning
of "reconstruction of the government" in order to have friendlier relations with
the West.