Word 4

Last year, when Trump posted the word “blowjob” on Truth Social, trying to smear both Hilary Clinton and Kamala Harris, some Russian observers floated a word to describe him–пошлый, or poshlyi. Russia's most popular dictionary (by Ozhegov), says this adjective, pronounced posh-li, means “morally base, tasteless, and crass.”

But poshlyi and its noun form–пошлость , or poshlost–have so many nuanced resonances that they have a sort of cult following. Many writers have penned essays on these two words, in part because in 1944 the great Vladimir Nabokov meditated at length on poshlost, saying that it is “not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive. By describing something as 'poshlost', we pass not only an aesthetic but also a moral judgment. Everything that is true, honest, beautiful cannot be described as poshlost."

“By describing something as 'poshlost',” writes Vladimir Nabokov, “we pass not only an aesthetic but also a moral judgment.”

In an excellent 2020 essay on poshlost, the American philosopher/journalist, Barrett Holmes Pittner, argues that the word “perfectly” describes Trump, and adds, “I found it hilarious that Russia may have the word to define the specific iteration of vulgarity that Trump possesses.”

Pittner notes that in Russia poshlost is often associated with “mobsters and criminals,” and that as such it fits Trump who, he says, “has the same gaudy, tasteless aesthetic. … He adorns everything he can, even toilettes, with gold.”

But a word of caution: Even if your home is appointed with Renoir prints, instead of gold toilettes, you may still be poshlyi. In a 2014 piece for the website Russia Beyond, Alexey Mikheev stresses the phoniness inherent in poshlost, associating it with “a pretense to having an ‘elevated’ taste in the absence of an independent aesthetic feeling.” Mikheev includes among the poshlyi people who “admire highbrow art, music, and literature (‘O, Mahler! O, Joyce!’) just because this is what people in your circle do. .. This particular type of poshlost,” he says, “is called snobbery.”

[Picture: Official 2025 inauguration photo of Trump]