по понятиям (po ponyatiyam)

What it means

1. 1.

   By the unwritten code rather than by the law. Names the parallel system of obligation — who owes whom, what counts as fair — that the criminal world ran on and that ordinary Russians borrowed as a way of describing informal rules anywhere.

2. 2.

   Now used half-jokingly in offices and among friends for anything settled by custom instead of by contract, but the original weight is still audible.

Literally: by the understandings

Examples with translations

• Они там всё решают не по закону, а по понятиям.

  Nothing there is settled by law — it's settled by the unwritten rules.

• Так не по понятиям, мы же договаривались.

  That's not playing fair — we had an agreement.

  Note: Between friends this is jocular. Said in the wrong company it is an accusation.

Where it comes from

Core фе́ня — the argot of the Soviet camps — where понятия were the thieves' own binding code, explicitly opposed to state law. The phrase entered general speech in the 1990s along with the men who had learned it.

Other forms

Romanised as:

po ponyatiyam