Cheap Toads

It happens every year. Before the holidays, we are urged to open our hearts and wallets to delight our loved ones with gifts and support the needy with necessities. After the holidays, we are urged, by our conscience or our bank accounts, to be frugal. 

In Russian culture, being frugal (экономный, умеренный) is acceptable. Being generous (щедрый) is better. But being greedy and cheap are Very Bad Things. In Russian, the two concepts are almost always combined, and they are expressed in two sets of words: one set that begins with ж- and another set that begins with ск-.

The ж- words — жадный (greedy); жадина (penny-pincher); жмот (cheapskate); and прижимистый (tight-fisted) — all come from the verb жать (to hold tight, wring, squeeze). There is a lot of folk wisdom about greedy folks: Жадных я не уважаю. (I don’t respect greedy people.) Как всякий богач, был прижимист. (Like all rich people, he was a penny-pincher.) Один типаж жадины — это мужчина из серии “не будем тратить лишнего.” (One kind of cheapskate is the type of man who says, “We’re not spending one kopek extra.”)

Of the batch, жмот is probably the worst, but even moneygrubbers may have some redeeming features: Вася и Галя рождены друг для друга. Он жмот, она лентяйка. Но какие оба обаятельные! (Vasya and Galya were born for each other. He’s a tightwad and she’s a lazybones. But they are both so charming!)

An expression for a momentary or sudden resistance to laying out money for something is the strange жаба душит (literally, “a toad chokes someone else/me”). There are several versions of the origins of this phrase. One theory is that it comes from the phrase грудная жаба (literally, a chest toad) used to describe stenocardia. Supposedly it feels like you have a large toad on your chest. But… but… how would anyone know what it feels like to have a toad sit on you? 

In any case, when a toad chokes you, it means you don’t want to pay for something. Меня жаба душит платить 200 рублей за пачку сигарет. (I’m too cheap to pay 200 rubles for a pack of cigarettes.)

Now for the ск- set of cheap, greedy folks: скупой (cheap); скупец (a cheapskate) and скряга (a miser). These people are reviled in Russian culture: Он был скуп и давал своим сотрудникам столько, сколько было нужно, чтобы не умереть с голоду. (He was so cheap that he only paid his employees enough to keep them from starving to death.) But they often get their comeuppance, codified in sayings like скупой платит дважды (a miser pays twice). In English, we just warn: Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish.

You can also be miserly in ways that don’t involve money, although we tend to express this differently in English: Он скупой на похвалу. (He is sparing with praise.) Официальное сообщение посольства пока скупое. (The official announcement by the embassy hasn’t told us much yet.)

You don’t want to be скряга, a real miser. Discovering that someone is скряга can be more than disappointing: Парень мне опредёленно нравился, а тут сразу две неприятных новости: у него есть девушка и он — скряга. (I really liked the guy, but then I found out two unpleasant things about him all at once: he has a girlfriend and he’s cheap.) What a loser!

Finally, there are eponyms for these terribly unpleasant people. In English, Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” is the epitome of being niggardly. In Russian, it’s Степан Плюшкин, from Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, a hoarder who wants to offer three-year-old cake to a guest.

No matter what the language or the season, neither a Scrooge nor a Плюшкин