Mat (, matershchina / materny yazyk) is the term for vulgar, obscene, or profane language in Russian and some other Slavic language communities.
Four pillars of mat
In 2014, Roskomnadzor compiled a list of four lexical roots, with any words derived from these roots - nouns, adjectives, verbs, participles etc - of the Russian language which it deemed "absolutely unacceptable in the mass media": khuy ("cock"); pizda ("cunt"); yebat ("to fuck"); and blyad ("whore"). Since Roskomnadzor is the governmental agency legally entitled to make such decisions, this is exactly the currently active Russian legal definition of "mat".
David Remnick believes that mat has thousands of variations but ultimately centers on those four words.
All mat-words were included by Polish publisher Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in the 3rd and 4th editions of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, which was printed four times in 1903–1909 (twice) and in 1911–1912, 1912–1914. The inclusion of rude and abusive words became an obstacle to the reprinting of this version of the dictionary in the Soviet Union for censorship reasons.
Slavic languages, including Russian, are very rich in terms of word formation by adding prefixes and suffixes. For instance, in Russian, usually, the perfect form of a verb is created from its imperfect form by adding a prefix like "na-", "ot-", "s-" etc (i.e. "delat'" - "to do", "sdelat'" - "to have done"). This richness also occurs with "mat" too, thus some Russians claim that Russian language is extremely rich in its "mat", and perhaps the world's richest language in terms of obscene/profane lexicon.
Khuy
Khuy (), often also written in Latin as "hui" or even "hooy" by Russian schoolchildren/beginners in their English studies, means cock, penis, or for an equivalent colloquial register: dick. The etymology of the term is unclear. Mainstream theories include from Proto-Indo European (PIE) *ks-u-, related to хвоя (khvoya, "pine needles"), attributed to Pederson, 1908.
From PIE *hau-, related to хвост (khvost, "tail"), attributed to Merlingen, 1955; from Mongolian хуй (khui, meaning "sheath" or "scabbard"). This was the etymology endorsed by the Soviet government and attributed to Maxim Gorky, who claimed it was a loan word, imposed during the Mongol yoke. Alexander Gorokhovski suggests the derivation from the Latin huic (lit. "for that", used on prescriptions for genital diseases) as a euphemism, because the old Russian "ud/uda" (from PIE root *ud- meaning "up, out") became taboo in the mid-18th century.
Currently, the first volume of the Great Dictionary of Mat by the Russian linguist and folklorist Alexei Plutser-Sarno treats only expressions with the stem хуй (khuy), numbering over 500 entries; 12 volumes are planned. The word khuy also appears in various other Slavic languages with the same meaning and pronunciation but not always the same spelling, such as the Polish chuj.
Pizda
Pizdá () means cunt. A derivative of this word is the interjection Pizdets. This word, depending on the situation, can express a vivid form of almost any emotion, ranging from sadness and annoyance (“pizdets, my girlfriend cheated on me”, or “pizdets, I missed my flight”), ending with an expression of joy (“pizdets, my son has just been born!")
Yebát'
Yebát () (lat. futuere) means "to fuck", "to copulate", "to have intercourse".
Blyád'
Blyád''' () means whore. In the Old East Slavic the word блѧдь (блядь in modern orthography) – blyad, meaning: "deception, nonsense, insane, adulteress", is preserved in the Church Slavonic in three meanings: "deception, delusion", "idle talk, trivia" and "debauchery, adultery".
The word is often combined with the non-mat term "suka" (, bitch) to form "suka, blyád" (сука, блядь) especially among Internet users and memes, an approximate analogue for the expression "fucking shit". The term is very popular in the Counter-Strike video game community in the stylized form of "rush B, cyka blyat".
History and use
Some claim that the term mat derives from the Russian word for mother, a component of the key phrase "Ёб твою мать", "yob tvoyu mat (fuck your mother). However there is a Russian expression "благим матом" (blagim matom) which has no relation to obscenities, and whose etymology is unsure as well.
Obscenities are among the earliest recorded attestations of the Russian language (the first written mat words date to the Middle Ages).
Mikhail Lermontov's 1834 "A Holiday in Peterhof" ("Петергофский праздник") is one example of the usage of mat.