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Where did the word "goof" come from? The most common versions
Where did the word "goof" come from? The most common versions

Video: Where did the word "goof" come from? The most common versions

Video: Where did the word
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"Loch" has been one of the ten most common Russian insults for several decades. This is what they call victims of fraud and just very naive people.

In native speech, like other expressive "terms", it came from the criminal jargon. However, the initial meaning of the lexeme "goof" before it got into the explanatory thieves' dictionary is still hotly debated.

"Loch" is just a fish

So the word "goof" came from the language of the Russian Pomors. In the Arkhangelsk region, this was the name for a clumsy, stupid fish, as a rule, salmon. It was in this original meaning that the poet Fyodor Glinka used the word "goof". In the poem "The Virgin of the Karelian Forests" he described a young Karelian fisherman who " careless suckers sleepy swarm disturbs with a spear tag ».

"Loch" is just a man

According to one of the versions, the term “goof” was overheard by Russian peddlers from the Pomors - ofeni and began to use it in the meaning of “man”. And at first this word meant on the hair dryer neutral "any stranger man, no-fucking." Although even then it had a dismissive connotation: after all, ofeni deliberately considered themselves better educated, more literate and more agile than ordinary villagers-suckers. And only at the end of the 19th century, when professional criminals borrowed this word from the Ofen feni, it acquired the familiar meaning: "a stupid person, a victim of a crime."

"Loch" is an abbreviation

As you know, there are a lot of abbreviations in thieves' jargon. Some commentators are sure that "sucker" is just one of them and stands for "A person deceived by hooligans."

"Loch" is just a hole

Well, and the most popular version, to which most linguists are inclined. "Loch" comes from Yiddish and is translated into Russian as "hole". So Odessa pickpockets called their "clients". It was Odessans who enriched Russian criminal jargon with it in the second half of the 19th century.

Read also: The Secret of Hebrew Words

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