For as long as I’ve been studying Russian (over half a century now), I’ve been amused, intrigued, and occasionally irritated by the cliché of the “Russian soul,” about which many books have been written (e.g., Russia and Soul: An Exploration, Mystifying Russian Soul, The Light of the Russian Soul, and A Window to the Russian Soul, to take a few titles from the first page of Google Books results; a similar search on the Russian phrase produces many, many results). We’ve discussed the Russian word душа a number of times (e.g., 2017), and I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with simply saying it means ‘soul,’ because even though the two words are often used in similar contexts, the Russian one has a wider variety of occurrences that often do not match the English word at all. So I thought a worthwhile approach would be to list some common idiomatic phrases where that is the case, which usefully complicates one’s understanding of the Russian. Happily, this page from the Русско-английский фразеологический словарь [Russian-English phraseological dictionary] site lists a large number of such idioms, with English translations and often examples of use when you click through. Some of them use ‘soul’ where English uses ‘heart,’ e.g., душа надрывается ‘one’s soul is torn’ or душа уходит в пятки, literally ‘the soul sinks into the heels’ where we say “one’s heart slipped down to one’s boots” or “one’s heart leaped into one’s mouth,” and it often seems to represent a person’s inner self as a source of feeling and desire: душа не лежит (‘the soul does not lie [that way], is not [so] situated’) “smb. has a distaste for smb., smth.; smb. has no fondness for smb., smth.; smb. is not particularly fond of smb., smth.; smb.’s heart is not with smb.; smb.’s heart is not in smth.”; душа не принимает (‘the soul does not receive [it]’) “one is sick of smth.”; для души “for one’s spirit; for one’s
Idiomatic Soul.
September 12, 2025 by 42 Comments
Kusaal, quite apart from the mismatch between win “spiritual individuality” and siig “life force” and the respective meanings “pagan god” and “soul” forced on them in the Bible translation, also uses both sʋnf “heart” (the bodily organ) and ya’am “gall bladder” in expressions of emotion in a way not at all congruent with English.
For example, “I’m in love with you” is
M ya’am kpɛn’ɛf.
my gall.bladder enter.you
“My darling” in the Song of Songs is translated m ya’am bʋn “my gall-bladder thing.”
This is not actually any weirder than “sweetheart” when you start thinking about it. Actual human hearts are at least as squicky as gall bladders.
I would try calling my wife “my gall bladder” but I’m not sure she would receive it in the right spirit.
I cannot help much with души не чаять. You can check some discussion here. If that’s not in agreement with your soul (не по душе), I can add some random thoughts. 1) чаять used to be not only “hope” or “expect”, but also “desire” (я чаю …) or “on purpose” in the negative (нечаяно). Not sure what soul has to do with any of this, but 2) maybe it is a shortened version of “не чаять своей души” that is forget oneself out of love for somebody.
С души воротит doesn’t seem to be troublesome. Воротить has a meaning of revulsion as well.
1 Kings 3:26 (KJV): “her bowels yearned upon her son”
But when people talk or write in English in cliched or quasi-essentialist terms about the “Russian [national] soul,” it seems to me that “soul” is the right English word for the context – it would be unidiomatic English to talk about the Russian heart or the Russian gall bladder etc. instead.
@D.O. there are two questions here:
a. why с “off”
b. why воротит.
As you note, (b) has parallels: отвращение “1. disgust, revulsion, aversion 2. v.n. of отвратить “to avert, to ward off, to prevent”. (“Turn” is even used in the English translation in LH’s post, not sure if it has anything to do with the semantics of turning in aversion or not.)
But (a)?
I guess, отвращение is a good model. “от” and “c” are pretty close semantically.
Something that has just struck me about Kusaal M ya’am kpɛn’ɛf “I’m in love with you” is that while sʋnf “heart” is the part of the body generally involved in idioms expressing emotions (as in SAE), ya’am in its metaphorical use is usually more like “common sense” or even “wisdom.” “Mind” is quite often a reasonable translation.
It makes you wonder if the Kusaasi have a slightly different notion of the nature of romantic love from modern Europeans and Americans: not so much “you make me feel wonderful” as “I think you’re the one for me” or “my mind is set on you.”
But it’s probably unwise to try to read too much into what is in any case an idiom. And I have no aspiration to emulate Margaret Mead.
Yes, this would work for “воротит с этого”.
A couple notes:
1. “не лежит” – “не лежит [к чему-либо]” (to, towards something)
Cf. also расположен к.
Normally we don’t lie “towards”. I think this “towards” makes up a large part of the semantics and must be quoted too. Note that in Russian stand and lie can work as a spatial copula:
на столе стоит чашка и лежит книжка lit “on table stands cup and lies book”
положи книгу на стол lit. “lay book on table” (put the book on the desk)
за рекой лежат земли эльфов “beyond [the] river lie lands of-elves”
Yes, when I ask “why won’t you do X?” you say не лежит without к. You use it with X. But.
If it actually is – not sure – a dummy verb meant to link к, quoting it without к is strange
1.1 similarly воротит [от чего-то], though here – as long as we don’t understand how exactly it works – от can be interpreted in two ways, as a part of воротит от and as “because” (as in меня от тебя тошнит)
2. “does not receive” – “does not accept“
But when people talk or write in English in cliched or quasi-essentialist terms about the “Russian [national] soul,” it seems to me that “soul” is the right English word for the context
Yes, quite so — I didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t, I was just using the ubiquity of the phrase as an entry point to discussing the word itself.
I’m not sure what JWB means here.
Of course it is true that (in English) the cliche is what it is and isn’t what it isn’t.
Does JWB mean anything else?
Is it the English which is odd here?
Inner-self / personhood / aliveness etymologically connected to breathing isn’t unique to Russian душа. Say, Arabic nafs is covering a very similar spectrum too…
the yiddish cognate/descendant, דושע | dushe, only has the “darling, beloved” meaning*, which wiktionary finds in russian, whatever-we-decided-to-call-the-[X]kavian-family, and macedonian, but not in ukrainian or belarussian, which are the usual presumptive sources/closest cousins. i only partly understand the traditional yiddish body (physical, emotional, etc) as it’s present in idioms; it’s something i’ve been meaning to spend some time with but haven’t yet.
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* e.g. song lyrics like “veyn nisht dushe, veyn nisht lyube / du, nem a britshkele un for aheym” [don’t cry darling, don’t cry, love / get a 2-wheeled carriage and go home]
David Eddyshaw: “This is not actually any weirder than ‘sweetheart’ when you start thinking about it. Actual human hearts are at least as squicky as gall bladders.”
Equal squickiness, maybe, but not equal salience. I doubt if anyone would even know they had a gall bladder if they weren’t told, let alone be able to detect any connection between its doings and their emotions.
Connecting it to digestion of fats must not be easy but to learn about it, it’s enough to be a hunter.
Quite so. Cf also
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CF%81%CE%AE%CE%BD#Ancient_Greek
Come to that, it’s not at all obvious that the brain has anything to do with thinking or with one’s personality, thought it may seem so to us. Galen didn’t think so. When the ancient Egyptians mummified a body they took special care of most internal organs, but threw the brain away.
aliveness etymologically connected to breathing
Kusaal (and the rest of Oti-Volta) too: cf vʋe “be alive”, vʋ’ʋg “revive”, vʋ’ʋs “breathe.” The usual Kusaal word for any particular person’s “life”* is nyɔvʋr, which is a compound of nyɔɔr “nose” with the adjective vʋr “alive.” But all these words just refer to being alive as opposed to being dead: they never have any derived sense like “self”, much less “soul.”
* “Life” in general, as an abstract state of being, is vʋm.
I dew vum!
i only partly understand the traditional yiddish body (physical, emotional, etc) as it’s present in idioms; it’s something i’ve been meaning to spend some time with but haven’t yet.
Yes, I hadn’t really thought about the usefulness of idioms for understanding the penumbra of meaning (as it were) — I just lazily muttered “idioms are weird” and thought no more about it.
The truth behind чашка чаю REVEALED!
Reinterpretation of чаюшки-чаю (like баюшки-баю)?
I feel like I’m sharing a lot about Hebrew lately when it’s not most related to the matter at hand, but would you resist an opportunity to note that in Hebrew one’s heart drops to one’s underpants?
I would not, and don’t worry, sharing unrelated but enjoyable material about other languages is part of the remit of the Hattery.
I share about Modern Hebrew too, and I’m glad I’m not the only one.
I think there’s a Kusaal proverb about it.
Do you not have ‘soul’ for ‘person’ in English at all (‘not a soul in the place’), or just in completely different contexts from the Russian phrases? (Or am I misunderstanding the ‘such contexts’ in your last sentence?)
Good example; I hadn’t thought of it.
Case in point, Hebrew neshamá ‘soul’ is, I think, an old-fashioned endearment. I never heard it when I was growing up, and I would guess it’s a Sephardi or Mizrahi thing; perhaps Yuval can clarify. These days I see it on the internet used sarcastically, in a “bless your heart” sort of way.
I share about Modern Hebrew too
People sharing vaguely relevant snippets about languages they know well is my single most favourite thing about this blog (though by no means its sole attraction.)
Of course, I do read grammars for fun. But then, who doesn’t?
I think there’s a Kusaal proverb about it
Ana baŋi bɛ ka zuod ka’ yiibɔ!
You write grammars for fun.
(and I personally want more Hebrew)
That exists in German. It means being suddenly and mockably scared.
You write grammars for fun
So it please Your Honour, it was only the one, and that was a little one.
“But that was in another country,
And besides, the language is dead.”
Hebrew neshamá ‘soul’ is, I think, an old-fashioned endearment…I would guess it’s a Sephardi or Mizrahi thing
i think i’ve met that in a yiddish context (so as “neshóme”), but i’m not certain*; refoyl** has “neshomenyu”, glossed as “dear soul”, which i think confirms it (-enyu is almost always a form of address***). i’d’ve guessed that an ivrit version would’ve been calqued from yiddish “dushe” by people who also spoke russian, but just because that’s the linguistic territory i know – seems like it could just have come in directly, or been reinforced from the yiddish/slavic side, or from arabic/etc.
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* it rings to me more as an adult-to-child endearment (as opposed to, say, “hartsenyu” [broad], or “dushe”/”dushenyu” [mainly romantic]).
** who connects “dushe” with polish “dusza”
*** except in “sudenyu”, the messianic feast of levyosn and shor habor.
Vaguely relevant snippet: in aviation souls on board means number of people in total, crew plus passengers, if any. It’s used between air traffic control and pilots in urgent or emergency situations, maybe in other reporting contexts too.
Saved soles.
So neshama as just meaning “soul” is definitely something a child would pick up pretty early in life. They could also pick up some contrast with nefesh. Your first google hits would tell you the religious nuances but day-to-day I think the latter is just more… corporeal? It’s closer to “self”.
Neshama as a term of endearment or form of address is a whole nother thing, and that’s the typical sense you’d encounter it these days in Israel. Historically, it’s indeed very Mizrahi-coded, and/or romantically charged, but as these things go, it at some point became ironically used by Ashkenazis and in semi-formal register, to later be lexicalized as more or less normative colloquial talk. With the right intonation, you can get away with it regardless of your perceived ethnic association. Think “more-conventionalized sibling to kapara (penultimate stress)”.
Polish -niu, vocative of feminine nicknames in -nia at the ends of long derivation chains (Magdalena > Magda > Madzia > Madziunia).
@DM, aaaaaaa!!! Vocative!
I remember rebenyu from a song I heard from Psoi in 90s. Somehow I mechanically interpreted it as affectionate, but I didn’t realise it is analysable in Slavic…
However: in Russian ú is a prominent part of
Anúsha (Anya)
Anyúta (Anya)
Natúlia, Ninúlia (Natasha, Nina)
Ninúsik, Lenúsik (Nina, Lena)
while the consonant is highly variable. And I see this u in your Polish example as well, but not in rebenyu.
@rozele, Yuval,
in Russian I would have thought about tsarist (but not Soviet) Russia – and like rozele I’d expect same from Hebrew as spoken by Ashkenasims*.
* double plural because I was thinking of a [somewhat horrifying] Russian word I met: тайтсы (English “tights”, borrowed in Russian within a few years and specialised for ugly sportswear – by its marketers, I think?).
It’s uncomfortable in three (!) ways but the double plural is normal:)
the three ways:
1. homophonous to тайцы “Thai people” but with тс “ts” instead of ц “t͡s”
2. тс instead of ц normally happens when morphemes met, and it is not precisely homophonous to ц, it makes you ready to articulate two phonemes in careful speech.
So it is subconsciously heavier and not quite at place within a morpheme.
3. й [ʝ] is a consonant and the [çts] cluster (see 2 for how it is different from [çt͡s]) is horrifying.
души не чаять (‘not to expect the soul’ — a particularly odd idiom)
Anatoly wrote an extensive post about this which is well worth consulting if you read Russian; it goes into the history of the phrase and suggests a (plausible) account of it.