"Empty" is a word that is quite rare in the speech of well-mannered people. You can even say that it is completely absent in the vocabulary of many. Even if you do not know the meaning of this term, you probably understand: the word "empty" is jargon. And here you may be in for a surprise, because you can find this term even in the explanatory dictionaries of Ozhegov and Ushakov.
So why did a word with a completely harmless interpretation get such a "dark glory"?
Empty: dictionary meaning
If we turn to the dictionary, we will find an explanation that empty cars are just empty cars. It is used to denote a composition that is not loaded with anything. Typically, freight trains carry cargo to a destination and then return empty. In Ukrainian and colloquial Russian, the word "empty" sounds like "empty". This is how the term “empty” appeared.
But why is this word more often used as jargon?
Slang meaning of the word "empty"
To begin with, let's remember that jargon is a special social subspecies of a dialect. It does not have its own separate construction rulessentences, punctuation or spelling laws. However, it differs from ordinary speech by the use of special words (slang) and increased expressiveness.
It is believed that jargon is the weeds of pure Russian speech. Therefore, educated and educated people should avoid them. The main categories that jargon uses are: youth, criminals, members of the criminal world, uneducated people. When creating slang words, simple terms are given a new semantic color.
So, in the slang language, “to drive empty” is to lie, not be able to answer for words and deeds, throw promises to the wind.
Which phrase made this word famous?
"Empty" is a word that is especially "famous" in a particular usage. The phrase "Donbass does not drive empty" was invented back in the distant 50s, that is, this jargon is not modern. Donbass (a region in eastern Ukraine) is the center of the country's coal industry. "The empty man does not drive" - that is, the cars from the Donbass left to the eyeballs loaded with coal.
In the 2000s, the phrase gained new popularity thanks to the current governor Viktor Yanukovych. Whatever the head of the Donetsk region had in mind, his criminal past brought its own semantic connotation to the phrase. Indeed, in the thieves' lexicon, as you already know, "to drive empty" is also deciphered as "to talk nonsense, not to be responsible for what was said." Viktor Fedorovich wanted to emphasize that “specific boys” live in the Donbass, who are responsible for their words, and he did it quite well. The phrase became an independent quote and that's it.still on the move.
