2017-02-22

глубинка is a colloquial word that means a remote place, far away from administrative and cultural centers. But that’s very far from the meaning intended by the people who used it around me. I’ve been to a public баня several times and they use this word to designate the last time people go into the steam room, when the temperature is expected to be hotter than usual. People come and go freely into the steam room, but during the глубинка the room is specially full. In order to raise the temperature (or just the pain), far more water is poured over the stones than regularly. I don’t know how disseminated this meaning is; I couldn’t find a single mention of this word that is compatible with this meaning. My wife tells me she wasn’t aware that this word could be used like that. Maybe it’s a slang word only known to баня goers. Maybe only in Tolyatti. Maybe only in this particular баня, who knows.

As for the etymology, I assume it’s related to глубинный, deep, and глубина, depth, which makes sense: I could say that a remote place is located in the depths of the country. глубина is known to be related to глубокий, deep. Vasmer further says they are probably related to Greek γλύφω, meaning to carve, cut and to Latin glubo, meaning to bark, peel; Shansky agrees. In this case, modern words like English glyph, hieroglyph would be related to глубинка because of their Greek origin. Native English words include cleavage, cleft and, who knew, clever.

2019-03-24: In the баня someone asked how the last time in the steam room was called, and people told him: глубинка. I don’t know where he was from, but he definitely wasn’t a complete foreigner like me. This certainly means that глубинка is not a word known by all баня-goers, but it could also imply that the last time in the steam room, whatever it may be named, is a thing in other places too, since he asked what was it called — although, of course, people were talking about глубинка before and he may just have guessed what was going on.

  • Type: word

  • Lemma: глубинка

  • Russian: Подходит к концу мой полугодовой трип по российской глубинке.
  • Russian: О самой красивой деревне в архангельской глубинке заговорили федеральные СМИ.

  • Russian: Как в «глубинке» ориентируют школьное образование на стандарты ХХI века?

  • AHD gleubh-
  • SIE *glewǝbh-
  • WP gleubh- 401
  • V глубокий