A while back I posted an entry with the title ‘The Russian Emotion: Sickness’ , but it seems that I left one way of expressing feeling under the weather unmentioned back then. One early morning last fall a Russian friend told me: «Ты выглядишь неважно.» That didn’t make much sense at all to me at first, since I thought she had just said to me: “You look unimportant”. Well, perhaps I wasn’t wearing a smart suit and it could be that I went too easy on the mascara that morning, but does that make a person look unimportant? I was, to say the least, puzzled, this leading to silence on my part and caused her to further develop our conversation on her own with a follow-up question: «Не заболела ли ты?» [You’re not sick, are you?] That was when I had myself a little aha-moment and answered: «Нет, не думаю, хотя горло немножко болит» [No, I don’t think so, even though my throat hurts a little]. What turned out to be the beginning of a cold was also the beginning of understanding the second meaning of the adverb «неважно» – unwell; not very well.

Here are two other ways to use this word in sentences about sickness:

«Он себя неважно чувствует» – He doesn’t feel very well.

«У неё неважное здоровье» – She has poor health.

Of course, one can always use this word in its general meaning, for example exclaiming «Неважно!» [It doesn’t matter!] when asked window or aisle while checking in at the airport. You could also break up a silly argument about whether it’s best to provide still or carbonated water for the speakers at conference about global warming with saying: «Вопрос неважный!» [It’s an unimportant matter!]. And you’d be right. After having said that you could add «Нам сегодня нужно сосредоточиться на важном!» [We have to concentrate on what’s important today!] and you’d be even more right.