забить (zabit)

What it means

1. 1.

   To drop something; to stop caring about it and walk away. Always with на: забить на учёбу, 'to give up on studying'.

2. 2.

   The clean, everyday equivalent of забить хуй, whose shortened form this is — which is why it sounds slightly blunt to older ears even though the offending word is long gone.

Literally: to hammer in

Examples with translations

• Забей, не стоит нервов.

  Let it go — it isn't worth the stress.

  Note: The imperative забей is one of the commonest pieces of advice in colloquial Russian.

• Он забил на универ ещё в марте.

  He gave up on university back in March.

Where it comes from

A truncation of the mat phrase забить хуй на что-то, with the taboo word simply dropped. Half of the euphemistic layer in Russian works this way: not substitution but silent deletion.

Other forms

Romanised as:

zabit