Russian lesson of the day
Russian Lesson of the Day allows you to practice the vocabulary you learn with us using the method of spaced repetitions.
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Feel free to re-discover the previously posted vocabulary.
Feel free to re-discover the previously posted vocabulary.
Russian word of the day: Замахнуться
Jul 28, 2017 (see all)
замахну́ться
[ za-mah-nú-tsa ]
to make to hit, to lift one's arm (against); to prepare for something difficult
Examples
Same stem words
Jim Johnson says:
Why are both examples in the past tense (прошедшее)? The English tenses don’t make sense.
Learn Russian Daily says:
Hello Jim,
Thank you for your comment.
It’s a perfective verb, so it can only be used in the Past or in the Future tense, and out of both, the Past is the most used. This is why both examples are in the Past.
There are two possible meanings of this verb:
– if you замахнулся на кого-то, it means you lifted your arm (or your arm holding something else) against someone or ready to hit someone (we’ve corrected the tense for the English translation, here you were right).
– if you замахнулся на что-то, it means you are planning to do that что-то, you took a challenge to do it. Since there is no direct translation in English for this case, the closest we found was the one we gave. If you can suggest something better, we’ll gladly add it to the site.