Modern citizens are increasingly moving away from the criminal world, although they are happy to borrow various capacious terms. It looks unusual, allows you to surprise your friends with a sonorous word. But what is "urka", many do not know, even if they love to flaunt the concept in a circle of friends. For some reason, they consider it an indispensable attribute of a significant person in society, capable of solving any problem.
What are the meanings?
Small children are happy to accept any information. And if you suddenly accidentally drop a bad word to correct the situation, it is enough for them to say that the “urka” is such a funny purring animal. By analogy, in the youth environment, this is how they sometimes call their partner, replacing the usual “seals”, “kitties” and “kittens”. However, the truth is a little more ugly, and the concept is deciphered as:
- A thief engaged in large robberies.
- Recidivist, as well as a high-security prisoner.
- A person of impudent behavior, a prisoner.
As you can see, there is no escape from the criminal component. Would you like to call someone a criminal? It is better to use other definitions. Andnevertheless, it is very interesting how the word "urka" appeared and was fixed in this meaning.
Where did the concept come from?
No one can give a definite answer. Although they offer various theories that are inextricably linked with the world on the other side of the law. The main version is considered to be "lesson convicts", from whom they took the first two letters from each word and combined them. These gentlemen went into temporary exile and worked at the logging site, and after serving their sentence they could return to normal life.
Unfortunately, it is known that such an "urka" often committed a second crime and returned to hard labor.
Linguists put forward their own options. One is from the Turkic languages, the second is attributed to Odessa Jews:
- "urk" denotes a ferocious person, and the root "ur" is included in the Kazakh "urlyk" and "urs", respectively, "robbery" and "thief";
- "Urem" is a "poor man", which gradually could be slightly distorted and point to any person who was imprisoned in general.
When is it appropriate to use?
Today, at the everyday level, the word is abusive and serves to insult the interlocutor. Such a conversation is bound to turn into mutual accusations.
You can partly dilute the gloomy associations. What is "urka"? This word also appeared in gaming slang. Gamers happily and consonantly refer to members of the orc race as such, and many of them proudly use the colorful self-name.
However, foroutside the gaming community and in the wild, people better rid the lexicon of this jargon.
