45 Russian words that don't translate into English

An interesting new thread has appeared on Twitter. In it, a girl named @AAluminium gives a list of Russian words, the meaning of which cannot be accurately conveyed in English (at least in one word, not a whole phrase). She decided to talk about this, as opposed to the popular belief that not everything in English can be translated into Russian while preserving the shade of meaning, but Russian is always translated.

1. Yearning.

The word melancholy cannot be translated into English, because it is sadness, and melancholy, and nostalgia, and boredom, and a million more concepts that are included in this one word. Nabokov explains: pic.twitter.com/QtLxCGvGnG

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

3. Drink it.

Does not translate. No way. Nope. Know. You can insert carouse, carousel, but these are still just fun or not so much parties, binge. But don't get drunk.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

5. Rudeness.

No, not boldness or audacity, which imply a bullet-like, harsh behavior. Granny in line at the store is hardly a cocky lioness, is she?

instagram viewer

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

8. Get excited

On the one hand, and flutter, and seemingly rouse from sleep, and now a thousand different interpretations, but only everything is not right. Thank you Fet, I send greetings.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

13. Lull.

Lull and rock, of course, are about the same, but they don't mean humming songs and so on. This is a stupidly physical act of rocking the cradle, while lulling is muttering something.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

14. The word "keep up".

Yes, you can say manage to do smth, but this is more "I managed ..." or "I made it on time", but still it's not that. I myself use the first structure.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

18. I am extremely amused that the word UNLIMITED is untranslatable):
Mayhem would be the closest English equivalent, however, it does not describe the depth of this Russian word, which also means lawlessness, complete disorder and actions that go beyond any laws and moral principles

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

24. The buzz.

I don’t know how much this is about the Russian language, because the word itself, it seems, came from Arabic and so it remained here.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

26. It's funny enough that the word meaning is also untranslatable, since combines both meaning and sense

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

32. Russian feat is not an English feat. Feat literally comes from factum (something is done), and a feat is something to move, to move something off the ground.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

36. Party. Not a patch, but a party. It happened, by the way, from "shuffling the cards", because at the get-together you will communicate with different people like cards in a deck.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

38. Beloruchka. As soon as they did not try to translate it, in the end they left the lazy person.

- Choupinoupinette (@AAluminium) July 12, 2020

More in original thread. Readers disagreed with some words and still managed to find a translation for them (often this is a little-known slang or idiom). However, you can always argue that the shade of the meaning is not conveyed in them enough, or the structures are too long.

Can you remember some typically Russian words or concepts that cannot be fully expressed in another language?