3

In Пушкин by Tynyanov we have:

Разумовский, говорят, истратил на двухчасовой завтрак одиннадцать тысяч рублей и в лоск уложил и родителей, и учителей, и всех ведущих к познанию блага.

I don't understand "в лоск уложил". In particular, did the parents and the professors eat or were they excluded from the "завтрак"?

Improve this question
1
  • I think that that phrase tells nothing about the effects of the breakfast on his parents, teachers, etc. It rather describes the effect of learning how much he spent on organizing that breakfast. The breakfast itself is pictured several paragraphs below. Commented yesterday

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

I don't understand "в лоск уложил".

For the context: that text in question is about opening the Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo on October 19 (31), 1811.

Texts that age (cir 1850) were using "в лоск" to mean "to a high degree", "completely". Excerpts can be found in historical corpus of Russian here: link.

Though in contemporary texts (1950-2000), "уложить в лоск" is indeed an euphemism for "to get someone drunk to unconscious state", I believe that the connotation of drinking was attached to this phrase much later.

Having read a few more pages from the original text, I believe this phrase means something along the lines of "knocked them dead", in the sense that his parents and professors were shocked to learn how much Razumovsky has spent on a single breakfast.

The breakfast itself is described later, and it seemd very pompous, preceeded by speeches, attended by Emperor Alexander I (still refered as "Tsar" in the text), his spouse and his mother, lots of high officials, and all of them doing personal inspection of Lyceum. That makes me quite skeptical at the possibility that the organizers got drunk in the course.

Improve this answer
3
  • Thank you, it is very interesting (it seems odd to me too that the Minister of Public Education encourages professors to drink so much alcohol for the official opening of a school), but it seems that you think the text was written around 1850. From one hand the text has been written in the 1930's, from the other hand the author (who was very erudite) pretends here that this text has been written in 1811. Commented yesterday
  • @Bruno, yes I got the impression that the text is based on someone's diary written at the time of events. "1850s" is the date of other texts containing "в лоск" that I was able to find. I'm editing the answer to add a link to the historical Corpus. Commented yesterday
  • so we could say that on its own, "в лоск" just means "completely". Commented 21 hours ago
2

Here, it means "got them drunk as lords".

Уложить, literally "to lay down", means (in this context) "get someone so drunk that they can't stand".

Adjective + в + noun (acc.) is an idiomatic way to turn the adjective into absolute superlative ("very, to the utmost degree"). Mostly (but not exclusively) it's used with пьяный "drunk". There are many variations on the theme of пьяный в … "drunk as …", e.g. пьяный в умат, в лоскуты, в говно, в сопли, в хлам etc., пьяный в лоск being one of them.

  • Они выпили там огромную бочку донского вина, все были пьяны в лоск и превесело провели время с какими-то гимназистками. [М. А. Шолохов. Тихий Дон. Книга четвёртая (1928-1940)]
  • В свою объемистую утробу Иван Иваныч мог поместить невероятное количество всяких вин, в состоянии был пить иногда круглые сутки, перепить и уложить в лоск несколько кутящих компаний, а сам, что называется, ни в одном глазу — только лицо становится еще краснее. [Вл. А. Гиляровский. Друзья и встречи / Фогабал (1934)]

Пьяный can be omitted, and is implied in that case.

  • – Давай к охраннику. И чтобы через десять минут он был в говно. [Рэкетиры никому не нужны. Россия, SelfPub, 2022.]

It can be used with almost any adjective, although somewhat more rarely that with пьяный:

  • Это герой прапорщик с тремя крестами и, ну конечно, в лоск распропагандированный фронтовой делегат-большевик. [Б. Л. Пастернак. Доктор Живаго (1945-1955)]
  • Никаких сил не хватит у России снова создать армию, все растрачено и разворовано в лоск. [Л. А. Андреев. Дневник (1918)]
Improve this answer
2
  • the most common is "пьян в стельку". Commented 21 hours ago
  • Thank you! Your answer is useful to me, because I didn't know the expression "пьяный в лоск". Nevertheless, @IgorG 's answer seems to me more plausible because of the context (I hardly imagine professors to be drunk in such a situation), that's why I will probably accept his answer. Commented 2 hours ago

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.