Monday, May 13, 2013

Punch in. (New Russian)


I was swapping telephone numbers and other contact details with an editor in Moscow the other day. He used a verb I've never heard used in this context:

- Вбей себе мои номера на всякий случай.

(Punch in my numbers, just in case.)

Вбей is imperative of вбить (imperfective: вбивать.) It means to knock in, to drive in, to drive (a wedge) in, and, figuratively, to get into one's head, to knock into one's head.

Here, however, the reference is definitely to punching on the buttons of a mobile (or any button-operated) phone with the aim of putting the digits in its memory.

Update: This may change very soon, as a reader has just pointed out to me. More and more phones become tactile, so nobody 'punches in' anything anymore but taps!

©A.Anichkin/Tetradki. Pushkin with a RUS bumper sticker is my design, ask if you want to republish.

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