зашквар (zashkvar)

What it means

1. 1.

   Something shameful, beneath contempt, that taints anyone who touches it. In teenage use it is roughly 'that's a disgrace' and is applied to clothes, music and opinions.

2. 2.

   The origin is genuinely ugly and worth knowing: in prison argot зашквариться means to become irreversibly contaminated by contact with the lowest caste of inmate. Most teenagers using the word have no idea of this.

Examples with translations

• Ходить в этом — полный зашквар.

  Wearing that is an absolute disgrace.

• Не зашкварно у них подрабатывать?

  Isn't working for that lot a bit shameful?

Where it comes from

From prison argot зашкварить, itself from шкварка 'crackling, scorched fat' — the image is of being burned and so marked permanently. It reached mainstream youth speech through rap and battle-rap around 2015.

First attested: mainstream from the mid-2010s

Other forms

Romanised as:

zashkvar