Never mind the swastika someone painted on this poster (honestly, I didn’t even notice it was there when taking the picture so please forgive me this stupid mistake!) but let’s instead try to focus on two other things present there: 1. “the Soviet poster revived in the 21^st century”, and 2. poetry about a bank in times of crisis being both «преданный» [‘dedicated’] and «верный» [‘faithful’]. Some would say this is a. «симпатично» [ sympathetic; cute], or b. «смешно» [funny], perhaps even c. «сентиментально» [sentimental], but I would be brave about things and crown it a very certain sign of «отстой» [sediment, deposit; sludge, dreg], which is incidentally my new favorite Russian word!

Isn’t that so typical, though? Just as I finished blogging about my favorite Russian word (remember «есьчо»?) I meet another Russian word that is even better and I fall in love with it instead and… yes, I’ve change my mind! I’ve picked a new favorite word (and something tells me that this process of falling in love with new Russian words will last eternally…). I loved all of your favorite words which you mentioned in the comments for the last post – «ёжик» [small hedgehog] has two wonderful sounds: «ё» and «ж», «форточка» [‘window leaf’] you’ll probably use not only in Russian, but also only in Russia, «ощущение» [feeling, perception; sensation; feel] leaves a soft ‘feeling’ (get it?) in your mouth, and yes, we should all try to use «усвояемый» more often. The first time I heard the word «отстой» was from a friend of mine a couple of days ago when she had been to a restaurant which failed to make an agreeable impression on her and she thus commented it in the following fashion: «Там полный отстой!» [which could be translated as something in the manner of “it’s really bad there” or “that place is way behind”]. Clearly my friend wasn’t talking about «результат отстаивания» [result of settling] which, for example, one may define as «осадок, получающийся в результате отстаивания взвеси в жидкости (нижняя часть)» [a residue received as a result of suspension settling (the lower part)]. Thus «отстой» means the gross and disgusting last remains left from some kind of fluid on the bottom of jars or pots after some time has passed (depending on the owner of the jars or pots this amount of time can differ from days till years or even decades). Though clearly what she meant was not this sludge, as she used the word in a more ‘expressionistic’ and ‘figuratively speaking’ fashion, so the restaurant neither looked nor smelled nor served food reminding of moldering residues from the bottom of containers. Now I’m not a native speaker of Russian, but I figured out pretty fast that this word was no compliment, but I couldn’t grip the whole scope of it, so I asked her to clarify what it meant. She explained it as something that’s either far behind its own time, or just really bad (in many, many ways). Thus it can describe both the opposite of contemporary and the opposite of good stuff. But how to use «отстой» in every day speech? You can always try your way around with it, and use it whenever you’re not content with something, and see when it works and when it’s not okay. Or you can take a hint from these interesting sentences that I found when I googled the word (with imaginative translation into English courtesy of me):

«Французский Диснейленд – полный отстой по сравнению с испанским Порт-Авентура!» [The French Disneyland is complete dreg compared to the Spanish Port Aventura!]

«21 (двадцать одна) причина того, что iPhone (айфон) – это полный отстой!» [21 reasons why iPhone is absolute sludge!]

«Америка – это отстой?» [Is America way behind?]

«Дарвин – отстой, физика – отстой, таблица умножения – отстой.» [Darwin is sediment, physics is sediment, the multiplication table is sediment.]

Next thing to come – yours (and my!) least favourite Russian word. Actually I wanted to start with the word in Russian I absolutely hate… but I figured; positivism first!