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шмон

Russian prison slang shmon means a search or shakedown. It is famously said to come from Hebrew šəmōneh 'eight', after the 8 a.m. cell searches in Odessa's prison, but no dictionary can back the story up.

Weakest linkDisputed

The story you may have heard

That šmon is Hebrew šəmōneh 'eight', after the 8 a.m. searches in the pre-revolutionary Odessa prison. The story is repeated everywhere (including Russian Wiktionary, as 'presumably') but no attestation supports it, and the scholarly dictionaries give rival or no etymologies.

The road to Russian

1000 BCEBiblical Hebrew

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

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