бабочка

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Russian

Бабочки.

Etymology

From ба́бка (bábka, grandmother, old woman) +‎ -ка (-ka), originally a diminutive; from the folk belief that spirits of the dead live on as butterflies.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key):
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Noun

ба́бочка (bábočkaf anim or f inan (genitive ба́бочки, nominative plural ба́бочки, genitive plural ба́бочек)

  1. (animate) butterfly
    ночна́я ба́бочкаnočnája bábočkamoth (literally, “night butterfly”)
  2. (inanimate) bowtie
  3. (colloquial) feisty, spirited woman
  4. (colloquial) prostitute, hooker

Usage notes

Russian does not divide butterflies and moths the same way English does. Russian has мотылёк (motyljók) for a kind of small moth that swarms at night, and моль (molʹ) for the moth that eats clothes, but the other moths are all ба́бочки (bábočki).

Declension

See also

References

  • Vasmer, Max (1964–1973) “бабочка”, in Oleg Trubachyov, transl., Этимологический словарь русского языка [Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language] (in Russian), Moscow: Progress