Thursday, March 13, 2008

Mukhosransk & Pizdelokh

In Hebrew, the word זה (zeh, meaning 'this') is a placeholder used in place of any noun. The most popular personal name placeholders are (mahshmo) or 'whatsisname' (thus: 'Tell mahshmo to put the zeh on the zeh'), מֹשֶׁה (Moshe = Moses) and יוֹסִי (Yossi, diminutive form of Joseph) for first name, and כֹהֵן (Cohen, the most popular last name in Israel) for last name. However, in ID and credit card samples, the usual name is Israel Israeli for a man and Israela Israeli for a woman (these are actual first and last names).
The traditional terms are Ploni פלוני and his party Almoni אלמוני (originally mentioned in Ruth 4:1). Ploni Almoni also is used in official, contemporary situations. For example, addressing guidelines by Israel postal authorities utilize Ploni Almoni as the addressee.[8]
A vulgar term for an unspecified place mostly popular in the Israel army is פִיזְדֶלוֹך (, formed from the Russian pizda, pussy, and the German and Yiddish Loch = hole). Also quite common is תיז (א)נביא (Tiz (e) Nabi “the prophet’s ass”, from Arabic), and again Timbuktu. A kadigan for a time in the far past is תרפפ"ו (pronounced Tarapapu, which somewhat resembles a year in the Hebrew calendar but is not quite one).
Especially older Ashkenazi speakers often employ the Yiddish placeholders "Chaim Yankel" and "Moishe Zugmir". Buzaglo (a typical Moroccan-Jewish last name) is a placeholder for a simple lower-class citizen. The term Buzaglo test was coined by then-Attorney General Aharon Barak in the 1970s for the proposition that the law should apply with equal leniency (or severity) to a senior public official and to the simplest ordinary citizen.
In Russian, among the common placeholder names are это самое (this particular [object]), штука (thing; diminutive forms also exist), ботва (leafy tops of root vegetables), фигня (crud) and хуйня (in mat slang; roughly translatable as something dickish), хреновина (). A term for something awkward, bulky and useless is бандура (bandura, an old Ukrainian musical instrument, big and inconvenient to carry). When speaking about something ideal, non-realistic, an idiom "сферический конь в вакууме" (literally, "a spherical steed in vacuum") is (jokingly) used. A kadigan for a monetary unit is тугрик (Tögrög, the monetary unit of Mongolia)
Obscene
На хуй, meaning to hell or anywhere out of here
В жопу and в пизду meaning deep to hell
A derogatory kadigan for a remote and uninteresting town is Мухосранск (Mukhosransk, "Fly's Shit Town"). (read more...)

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