Figurative Meanings Of Russian Verbs Of Motion (глаголов движения)

One of the challenges of learning Russian is the use of verbs of motion in a figurative sense. In spite of the fact that it’s difficult, it is an interesting topic to study as well. Presented in this article are some examples of how to use verbs of motion in a figurative sense that you can learn and use in your speech.

Many words in the Russian language are ambiguous. That is, they can represent different meanings within different contexts.

The main meaning of a word is primary and original. However, words also have secondary meanings as a result of branching primary lexical meaning for the word.

During Russian language lessons, and even outside the classroom, you often encounter both the primary and secondary meanings of words.

Verbs are an important and often-used part of speech and can have quite complex grammatical behaviors in Russian. Verbs of motion, however, are some of the most confusing.

Verbs of motion can change depending on the use of a prefix (идти – ходить, ехать – приехать), as well as have perfect and imperfect forms (ходить – сходить, ездить – съездить).  Of course, as soon as you figure out the correct use of these modalities of the verb, you might hear phrases like this:

Часы идут. 

Время летит. 

Жизнь бежит.

The images created by these word combinations are very evocative, but encountering them with no context or prior study can make the meaning difficult to understand. However, if you can understand the figurative meaning of the verbs in these cases, then this allows you to understand the imagery and the speaker accurately.

The following poem is another example of flowery imagery created by figurative use of verbs of motion: 

Говорят: часы стоят,
Говорят: часы спешат,
Говорят: часы идут,
Но немного отстают.
Мы смотрели с Мишкой вместе,
А часы висят на месте. (В. Орлов)

And, this poem makes use of both the literal and figurative meanings to produce a humorous treatment of the subject:

Шёл и дождик,

Шёл и снег,

Шёл и просто человек…

Do not despair – all you need to do is practice speaking and have regular communication with native speakers.  Getting a full grasp of this subject relies on getting enough experience to understand the expressions and recognize them quickly when you hear them.  Many of these are set phrases that you will hear over and over again.  

Here is brief primer: a list of phrases you can practice to make you more comfortable with this aspect of Russian.

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