Mat (profanity)

- of the Russian language which it deemed "absolutely unacceptable in the mass media": khuy ("cock"); pizda ("cunt"); yebat' ("to fuck"); and blyad ("whore").

[2] Mat-words were included by Polish publisher Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in the 3rd and 4th editions of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, which was printed four times in 1903–1909 (twice) and in 1911–1912, 1912–1914.

[8] Khuy (хуй; хуйⓘ), often also written in Latin as "hui" or even "hooy" by Russian schoolchildren/beginners in their English studies, means "cock", "penis", or for an equivalent colloquial register: "dick".

Mainstream theories include from Proto-Indo European (PIE) *ks-u-, related to хвоя (khvoya, "pine needles"), attributed to Pederson, 1908.

[9][10] From PIE *hau-, related to хвост (khvost, "tail"), attributed to Merlingen, 1955; from Mongolian хуй (khui, meaning "sheath" or "scabbard").

This was the etymology endorsed by the Soviet government and attributed to Maxim Gorky, who claimed it was a loan word, imposed during the Mongol yoke.

[16] Obscenities are among the earliest recorded attestations of the Russian language (the first written mat words date to the early Middle Ages[17]).

[2] Итак, тебе не заплачу я: Но если ты простая блядь, То знай: за честь должна считать Знакомство юнкерского хуя!

Iták, tebé ne zaplachú ya: No yésli ty prostáya blyad', To znay: za chest' dolzhná schitát' Znakómstvo yúnkerskogo khúya!

The contemporaneous use of mat is widespread, especially in the army, police, blue-collar workers, the criminal world, and many other all-male milieus, with particular fervor in the male-dominated military and the structurally similar social strata.

[20] An article by Victor Erofeyev (translated by Andrew Bromfeld) analyzing the history, overtones, and sociology of mat appeared in the 15 September 2003 issue of The New Yorker.