Grossman - Mama - teryat' v vese

[Max Pyziur]

On Fri, Jan 01, 2010 at 05:28:01PM -0500, greniers at GEORGETOWN.EDU wrote:
> Paul Gallagher wrote:
> 
> As a cultural value, however, some communities think all weight gain is 
> positive and all weight loss is negative. Probably a relic from the 
> times when famine was much more likely to kill you than heart disease, 
> diabetes, etc. in middle age.
> 
> Indeed.  The word "khudoi", of course, has both the meaning of low weight and of poverty/badness (plokhoi-khuzhe; sdelat' chto-to khudo-bedno, "'khudozhnik' ot slova 'khudo'", etc.)

I don't know if the same occurs in Russian, but in Ukrainian weight-gain is oftentimes described as an "improvement," of sorts; sometimes literally, sometimes ironically.

e.g. Він поправився/Вона поправилася
 
> Svetlana Grenier


Max Pyziur
pyz at brama.com

p.s. Thanks to Robert Chandler for continuing to engage us in his work w/ Vasily Grossman.

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