Archives for: August 2009, 17
Большой
August 17th, 2009 by DonThe most common word for big or large in Russian is большой. Notice that it is an end-stressed adjective: end-stressed adjectives always end in -ой in the masculine nominative singular. It declines like this:
| Masc | Neut | Fem | Pl | |
| Nom | большой | большое | большая | большие |
| Acc | * | большую | * | |
| Gen | большого | большой | больших | |
| Pre | большом | |||
| Dat | большому | большим | ||
| Ins | большим | большими | ||
Sample sentences:
| Большой бриллиант был найден в 1905 году. | A large diamond was found in 1905. |
| Я купил дочке куклу с большими глазами. | I bought my daughter a doll with big eyes. |
One phrase that the Russians use often is большие деньги, which word for word means “big money,” although it is often better translated as “a lot of money”:
| Моя сестра зарабатывает большие деньги. | My sister earns a lot of money. |
| Наших футболистов стимулируют большими деньгами. (source) | Our soccer players are being motivated with big money. |
One of the fun words that has developed in English over the last decade or two is “gynormous,” a combination of gigantic and enormous… in other words, really, really big. Russian has a similar word большущий, a combination of большой “big” and могущий “powerful,” which also means really, really big:
| Всем большущий привет! (source) | A gynormous “hello” to everyone! |
| Красивый кот по кличке Флинт жил на море на большущем корабле. (adapted from this source) | A handsome cat by the name of Flint lived at sea on a gynormous ship. |
One last thing: it is easy to confuse the word большой with the word больший. They mean different things. We'll address the latter word tomorrow.
XML Feeds