“To put on clothes and to clothe Nadezhda”

Maybe you recognize the title of today’s post — it’s a classic mnemonic device to help distinguish between the verbs надеть and одеть. Rest assured that it’s not only foreign students who have trouble with the two; do a Google search and you’ll find plenty of Russians griping about native-speaker celebrities, politicians, and TV news anchors who get the verbs mixed up.

Even natives get confused because, in fact, the difference in usage between надеть and одеть is (just slightly) more complex than the mnemonic infers. Er, wait, I meant: “more complex than the mnemonic implies,” darn it! Anyway, in this post we’ll try to sort them out.

The verb одевать/одеть (кого-нибудь) means “to dress someone; to put clothes on someone.” Thus, Мать одевает ребёнка (“The mother is dressing the child.”) You can also attach the reflexive suffix -ся, in which case it means “to dress oneself; to get dressed” — Женщина оделась (“The woman has gotten dressed.”)

With or without the -ся, the imperfective conjugates like читать (“to read”) — я одеваю, ты одеваешь, etc. — and its imperative is одевай(те). The perfective-future conjugation has an -н- added to the stem: я одену, ты оденешь…, and the imperative is одень(те). Also, the past passive participle одетый can be used adjectivally (with в + acc.) to mean “dressed (in)”:

Мы увидели байкеров, одетых в чёрную кожу.

(“We saw some bikers dressed in black leather.”)

In contrast, the pair надевать/надеть (что-нибудь) takes an accusative object that refers to an inanimate article of clothing, not a person: Она надела стеклянную туфлю (“She put on the glass shoe.”). By default, it’s assumed that you’re putting the piece of clothing on yourself.

So far, so simple: Надеть одежду, одеть Надежду.

But wait — what if you need to say something like “The prince put the glass shoe on Cinderella”? Here’s where the slight complexity comes in. For the most part, you can use both verbs interchangeably for this, but their syntactic constructions are NOT interchangeable!

To illustrate, suppose a little girl is dressing a кукла (“doll”) in a юбка (“skirt”). You could then say:

Девочка одевает куклу в юбку.

(“The girl is dressing the doll in a skirt.”)

OR

Девочка надевает юбку на куклу.

(“The girl is putting a skirt on the doll.”)

Either way, the verb is followed by two accusatives, though one of these has a preposition and the other does not. But whether it’s the person or the garment functioning as the direct object (with no preposition) depends on the verb.

Now suppose the girl herself has also gotten dressed — but (being in a silly mood), she put her socks on her hands! You might then say:

Девочка оделась в куртку, и надела носки на руки.

(“The girl has dressed herself in a jacket and she put socks on her hands.”)

If she’d put the socks on her feet where they normally go, it would be sufficient to say “Она надела носки” (“She put on the socks”), but when it’s necessary to be more clear, you can use на + [the body part(s) in the acc.].

So, to recap:

• одевать/одеть + кого-нибудь + в что-нибудь
  (“to dress someone in something”)

• надевать/надеть + что-нибудь + на кого-нибудь и(ли) на что-нибудь
  (“to put something on someone, and/or on some specified part of the body”)

That, I hope, clears up any confusion about these two verbs for putting clothing ON. But…

…what if you’re getting ready to take a bath? No problem — одевать(ся)/одеть(ся) has the antonym раздевать(ся)/раздеть(ся), “to undress someone (or oneself)”:

Мальчик раздевает сестрину куклу Барби.

(“The boy is undressing his sister’s Barbie doll.”)

«Разденься, Паша — тебе пора спать!»

(“Get undressed, Paulie — it’s your bedtime!”)

By the way, раздеть(ся) does not always mean stripping to total нагота (“nudity”), but can refer to the outer garments collectively, not including such items as your трусы (“underpants”).

However, if you’re taking off only a particular piece of clothing, then the antonym for надевать/надеть is the highly versatile verb снимать/снять (perf. cниму, снимешь…), here meaning “to remove (something)”. When you’re visiting a Russian home, for instance, within about 1.5 nanometers of the front door you will be reminded:

«Снимай-ка ботинки и надевай-ка тапочки!»

(“Take off your boots and put on the slippers!”)

Let’s wrap things up (no pun intended) with one more -деть verb: переодевать(ся)/переодеть(ся). In some contexts — if the accusative object is an article of clothing — the meaning is simply “to change clothes”:

Мужчина переодел брюки.

(“The man changed pants”

…which is synonymous with…

Мужчина снял брюки и надел другие брюки.

(“The man took off the pants and put on different pants.”)

But when followed by an instrumental noun referring to a person, the verb can mean “to disguise [someone or oneself] as someone else”:

Немецкий шпион переоделся[or: был переодет]советским солдатом.

(“The German spy was disguised as a Soviet soldier.”)

Have more questions about clothes in Russian? Ask in the comments and we’ll try to (ahem) ad-dress them!

* * * * *

Using words from this post, can you think up some sentences describing how two kids might change around the stick-on wardrobes of «Наташа» and «Давид», as seen above? Here are some more clothing-nouns that might come in handy:

• блузка (“blouse”)
• джинсы (“jeans”)
• кепка (“baseball cap”)
• купальник (“bathing suit”)
• пальто (“overcoat”)
• платок (“kerchief; head scarf”)
• платье (“dress; gown”)
• свитер (“sweater”)
• смокинг (“tuxedo”)
• футболка (“T-shirt”)
• шапка (“warm winter hat”)
• шляпа (“generic hat”)
• шуба (“fur coat”)