"Lave" and "lavandos" - what is it? Slang names for money

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:40

Modern slang and jargon is full of different concepts. Everyone knows the meaning of some. But there are also those whose meaning not everyone guesses. For example, what is "lavandos"? Where did it come from? Even the hero of Pelevin's famous novel asked this question.

Meaning

This word means money. Used both to simply talk about them, and to indicate that there is a lot of money.

Origin

So, where does this word come from, more associated with lavender flowers than with money? It came from the gypsy language. The word "lave" in it means just money ("lave nane" - "there is no money"). Initially, this word was used in criminal and prison jargon, but now it can be heard from quite ordinary people in everyday speech. Unlike "lavandos", "lave" has only one meaning. It's just money. This word does not characterize their number in any way.

"Lave" and "lavandos" in literatureand music

It is interesting, by the way, that the famous modern author Viktor Pelevin also has his own interpretation of this word. The writer encoded in two letters of the English language LV the phrase liberal values - "liberal values", thus ironically over them. In Generation P, a dialogue takes place between Morkovin and Tatarsky. The second asks where this word came from, because it is understood in the Arabian Peninsula, and even in English there is something similar. Morkovin answers this question with the words about "liberal values".

The word "lavandos" is also found in the tracks of rap artists. So, the rapper The Sweater begins one of his tracks with the words "napas lavandos" (what it is, now it's clear - "earned money"). The track itself is replete with obscene language, abusive language and slang. "Lavandos" is perhaps the most decent word in this track.

Other slang names for money

There are a lot of other words in Russian that denote money. So, for example, money is generally called "ball", "cabbage", "mani". Thousands of banknotes - "mowers", "pieces", "pieces". Five thousandths or five hundredths - "five" and "five-hundred". You can understand that we are talking about foreign currency by such words as "green", "bucks", "grinchik", "evrosik".

Philologists believe that most slangdesignations of money appeared spontaneously, as a result of a random statement of the speaker. However, there are exceptions: for example, only dollars were previously called "cabbage" because of the color. But over time, they began to designate any banknotes in this way.

The word "bucks" came either from buckskin - "deer skin", which used to be paid with the Indians, or from sawbuck - a device for sawing firewood in the shape of X - the Roman ten, depicted on the first ten-dollar bills.