List Of English Words Of Russian Origin
This page transcribes Russian (written in Cyrillic script) using the IPA. For a quick overview of Russian pronunciation, see WP:IPA for Russian.
Many languages, including English, contain words most likely borrowed from the Russian language. Not all of the words are truly fluent Russian or Slavic origin. Some of them co-exist in other Slavic languages and it is difficult to decide whether they made English from Russian or, say, from Polish. Some other words are borrowed or constructed from the classical ancient languages, such as Latin or Greek. Still others are themselves borrowed from indigenous peoples that Russians have come into contact with in Russian or Soviet territory.
Compared to other source languages, very few of the words borrowed into English come from Russian. Direct borrowing first began with contact between England and Russia in the 16th century and picked up heavily in the 20th century with the establishment of the Soviet Union as a major world power. Most of them are used to denote things and notions specific to Russia, Russian culture, politics, history, especially well-known outside Russia. Some others are in mainstream usage, independent of any Russian context.
Read more about List Of English Words Of Russian Origin: Common, Cuisine, Political and Administrative, Religious, Technical, Special, Animals and Plants, Various
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“My list of things I never pictured myself saying when I pictured myself as a parent has grown over the years.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.- men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep- hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“I had always been so much taken with the way all English people I knew always were going to see their lawyer. Even if they have no income and do not earn anything they always have a lawyer.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“We are all dead men on leave.”
—Eugene Leviné, Russian Jew, friend of Rosa Luxemburg’s lover, Jogiches. quoted in Men in Dark Times, “Rosa Luxemburg: 1871-1919,” sct. 3, Hannah Arendt (1968)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)