Ugly Word You Need to Know Posted by yelena on Aug 20, 2013 in language
To learn lots of Russian words quickly, it’s critical to understand how they are built. And to better understand how Russian words are built and how they change, it is important to learn some most common Russian prefixes and suffixes.
For example, today’s word is безобразие. It is built with the prefix без- or бес- (without). The consonant з changes to с in this prefix if it’s followed by a voiceless consonant. Some other words that use this prefix are
безразличие – indifference
беззаконие – lawlessness
безмозглый – brainless
бестолковый – clueless
беспорядок – disarray
The interesting thing here is you can’t assume that to get the opposite of any of these words all you have to do is to ditch the prefix. It does work with бестолковый-толковый and беспорядок-порядок pair, but not with the rest of them. In the cases of безмозглый and безобразие, removing без- will leave you with something that is not even a word. Talk about безобразие!
(Looking for more Russian pairs of opposites to memorize? Check out this post.)
By the way, what does безобразие mean? The root of it is образ (form). Безобразие literally means something formless or deformed. Someone exceptionally unattractive, downright ugly, might be called безобразный (hideous). But just as the word “ugly” can describe a situation, behavior or a trait, so can безобразие. Hence,
Такой долгий отдых это безобразие. – Such extended time off is outrageous.
Это безобразие, так относиться к людям! – It is shameful to treat people this way!
Безобразие выбрасывать столько продуктов. – It’s a shame to throw away so much food.
То, что творится со “Спартаком” – безобразие! – What’s happening with the Spartak ( soccer team) is outrageous!
Перестань безобразничать. – Stop misbehaving.
So what’s the opposite of безобразие? If we are talking about ugliness, then its opposite is красота (beauty). But things get less definite if we use безобразие to describe произвол (outrage) or some other отвратительная ситуация (ugly or outrageous situation). So I’d like to suggest the rule of thumb here:
Think of безобразный as a stronger word for плохой (bad). So the opposite is хороший (good). Let’s check using a couple of the above examples:
Такой долгий отдых, это – хорошо – Such extended time off is good.
Так относиться к людям – хорошо! – It is good to treat people this way!
Can you change the remaining three phrases to mean the opposite using хорошо?
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Comments:
Peter:
First of all, thank you for all your excellent and useful posts … they are very much appreciated.
One thing I find very difficult is remembering vocabulary and ‘word building’ may be an easier way to remember more vocabulary.
For example, my teacher in Odessa took the three letters ‘мен’ to show that there’s a family of words that can be used relating to it … менять-поменать, обмен, обмениваться-обменяться, измена, изменять-изменить, etc.
It’s like you have one basic and easily memorable ‘core’ word or particle and expand into a range of vocabulary by adding prefixes and suffixes which should also be easier to remember.
Are there any big ‘word families’ that you know of? I wonder, for example, if ‘дать’ has a lot of ‘relatives’ that could be easier to remember?
Thanks.
Peter.
yelena:
@Peter Peter, it’s an excellent technique for increasing vocabulary. I used it myself when learning English. I will include it in my future posts. Perhaps you already have a book called Roots of the Russian Language by George Z. Patrick. It is extremely helpful and I highly recommend it to anyone learning Russian.