как по маслу [kak pa maslu]
Meaning: You say this when things are going well, smoothly, swimmingly, without any obstruction or complication.
English equivalents: Easy sledding; plain sailing; swimmingly; like clockwork; without a hitch.
Posted in Uncategorized.
– October 6, 2009
и нашим и вашим [I nashim I vashim]
Meaning: to be involved in or connected with two different or opposing groups
English equivalents: run with the hare and hunt with the hounds; be a double agent; have/keep a foot in both camps
Posted in Uncategorized.
– September 27, 2009
Закинуть/закидывать удочку [zakinut'/zakidivat' udochku]
Meaning: to try to discover what a situation is really like before you become very involved in it, to make some preliminary investigations, to experiment to see how successful or acceptable something is before implementing it.
English equivalents: To put a line out; to put forth/send out a feeler; angle for something; probe the ground (зондировать почву); test the waters (прощупывать обстановку). Continued…
Posted in Uncategorized.
– September 20, 2009
Ждать у моря погоды [zhdat' u mor'a pogodi]
Meaning: Waste time by delaying doing something; wait around for opportunities instead of going out and making something happen.
English equivalents: let the grass grow under one’s feet; wait for something to turn up; wait for one’s ship to come in.
Posted in Uncategorized.
– September 15, 2009
Если бы да кабы [jesli bi da kabi];
Если бы да кабы, то во рту росли б грибы [jesli bi da kabi to va rtu rasli b gribi]
Meaning: wishing for something or wanting it is not the same as getting or having it;
wishing for things is useless. (Often said in reply to someone who says something beginning with “If only….”)
English equivalents: If ifs and ans were pots and pans (there’d be no work for tinkers’ hands); If wishes were horses; If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Posted in Uncategorized.
– September 7, 2009
Делать из мухи слона [delat’ iz muhi slana]
Meaning: to exaggerate the importance or seriousness of a problem, to treat a particular event or problem far too seriously
English equivalents: make a mountain out of a molehill, turn molehills into mountains, blow out of proportion, make something out of nothing
Posted in Uncategorized.
– August 31, 2009
Гора с плеч (свалилась) [gara s pl’ech svalilas']
Meaning: You say this when you have relieved yourself of a burden, normally a something that has been troubling you or worrying you.
English equivalents: a weight (load) off one’s mind (shoulders)
Posted in Uncategorized.
– August 23, 2009
Вертеться (у кого-то) на языке [virtetsa na jazike]
Meaning: You say this when you are sure that you know the word, but you just can’t quite remember it at the moment.
English equivalent: be on the tip of one’s tongue
Posted in Uncategorized.
– August 16, 2009
Белая ворона [belaja varona]
Meaning: someone unusual, extraordinary, different from the other people in a group; an outsider; a social outcast.
English equivalents: odd type; black sheep; square peg in a round hole.
Posted in Idiom of the Week.
– August 9, 2009
Намотать на ус
Meaning: take something into consideration, make a note of something, memorize something very well.
English equivalents: Make a mental note of something, Put that in one’s pipe and smoke it, Bite/chew on something.
Posted in Idiom of the Week.
– August 2, 2009
A good command of a foreign language implies the ability to speak using the expressions typical to the language, that is, idioms.
An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words, which makes idioms a difficult peculiarity of a language, hard for foreign learners to understand.
"Idiom of the Week" from Marina may be of great practical value to you, as every week you can study a useful idiom that Russian native speakers use frequently in their everyday life.
I'm a native speaker of Russian and have been studying English since I was six years old. I have a Master's degree in English Philology and Education, and I teach English in my home town of Daugavpils, Latvia.