Lokhotron = Scam?

[Timothy D. Sergay]

Regards to everyone. Let me add some notes to Alina's data for LOKH; this is 
all from M.A. Grachev's "Slovar' tysiacheletnego russkogo argo" (M: RIPOL 
KLASSIK, 2003). I'll note Grachev's sources, too, since they look valuable. 
For LOKH(1) Grachev has "litso (cheloveka? --avtor), citing Popov, V.M. 
"Slovar' vorovskogo i arestantskogo iazyka" (Kiev: "Pechatnia" Iakovleva, 
1912). For this sense, Grachev adduces an etymology from Polish slang: loch, 
wloch, "litso," citing Larin, B.A., "Zapadnoevropeiskie elementy russkogo 
vorovskogo argo," Iazyk i literatura, L., 1931, T. VII, cc. 113-30. In the 
following entry, LOKH(2), Grachev again cites Larin for this sense of the 
Polish loch: "naivnyi chelovek, zhertva prestupleniia." Again under LOKH 
(2), Grachev gives "muzhik (krest'ianin? --avtor), kotorogo mozhno 
odurachit', citing Potapov, S.M., "Slovar' zhargona prestupnikov. Blatnaia 
muzyka" (M: 1927). Variant in the sense "zhertva prestupleniia": LOKHAN. 
Also of interest are Grachev's definitions 4 and 5 for LOKH(2): "novichok v 
vorovskom dele," and "moral'no i fizicheskii unizhennyi chelovek"; variant: 
LAKH (durak). The verb LOKHANUT' kogo: obmanut'. There is too much, in fact, 
to cite it all. This is a very productive morpheme. There's no doubt about 
LOKHOTRON, though (indeed: scam, racket and so on): ("lotereia, 
ustraivaemaia moshennikami"), a contamination of LOTOTRON and LOKH. NB: 
LOKHOTRON may be best handled in English translation as something like 
"lottery scam"; you can't rely on LOKHOTRON always referring to the familiar 
"shell game," for which there's a specific term: NAPERSTOK (practitioners: 
naperstochniki), in which thimbles play the same role as the half walnut 
shelves in the anglophone "shell game."

Particularly charming: LOKHODROM: "mesto, gde obygryvaiut 'lokhov' v 
azartnye igry".

I've always thought that the most likely English translation for the basic 
sense of LOKH (zhertva prestupleniia) is "mark." "Dupe" and "victim" can 
also help, but "the mark" seems the most functionally equivalent to LOKH: 
the target identified by con men.

Tim Sergay 

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