блин (blin)

What it means

1. 1.

   Damn; oh no. The single most common mild swear in Russian and the one foreigners can safely use — a schoolteacher says it, a grandmother says it, it appears in children's cartoons.

2. 2.

   Like its taboo original, it also works as a filler dropped mid-sentence, where it means nothing at all beyond marking the speaker as informal.

Literally: pancake

Examples with translations

• Блин, опять забыл зарядку.

  Damn, forgot the charger again.

• Ну я, блин, не знаю, что тебе сказать.

  Well, I mean, I don't know what to tell you.

  Note: Filler use. Inserting one блин per sentence is the fastest way to sound conversational rather than textbook.

Where it comes from

The word for a pancake, chosen because it begins with the same two sounds as блядь — the same substitution principle as English 'sugar' for the other s-word. The disguise is transparent to everyone and bothers nobody.

Other forms

Romanised as:

blin