Russian Slang ‘отстой’: Meaning and Examples

Today we’re learning Russian from a real comment on the internet:

По всем пара́метрам — отсто́й. Хвати́ло десяти́ мину́т.
(It’s rubbish on every level. Couldn’t even make it ten minutes.)

Meaning

What does the Russian word ‘отсто́й’ mean?

‘Отсто́й’ is a colloquial slang word. It is used to describe something of very poor quality, unsuccessful, or disappointing. Most often it is used to evaluate films, series, books, concerts, competitions, and so on.

It is also very often used in combination with the adjective ‘по́лный’ (total, complete), which intensifies the negative meaning and makes the expression stronger.

Examples

Here are a few examples to see how this word appears in real life:

• Его́ но́вый рома́н — по́лный отсто́й. Фана́ты негоду́ют. (His new novel is total crap. Fans are outraged.)
• Се́рвис в рестора́не — отсто́й: жда́ли зака́з бо́льше ча́са. (The service at the restaurant was crap: we waited over an hour for our order.)

From the media:

• Дженна Ортега боя́лась, что эпизо́д с обме́ном тела́ми во второ́м сезо́не "Уэнсдэй" бу́дет по́лным отсто́ем. (Jenna Ortega said she was worried the body-swap episode in the second season of Wednesday might be rubbish.)

Note

From this word comes the adjective ‘отсто́йный’ — meaning bad or low-quality.

• Звук на конце́рте был отсто́йный. (The sound at the concert was rubbish.)
• Нас засели́ли в отсто́йный но́мер. Абсолю́тно не сто́ил свои́х де́нег. (We were given a terrible room. It was absolutely not worth the money.)

Declension

Most often in spoken language the word appears in the nominative and instrumental cases, but here its full declension:

Let’s also quickly look at how the adjective ‘отсто́йный’ is declined:

Have you ever had any experience you would describe as rubbish? Share it in the comments!