The key facts
- Valery Mokiyenko explained the popularity of «могнуть» by young people's craving for novelty, not by the borrowing itself
- The professor had not heard the word from his own students
- The compilers of Collins named the English word mogging the word of 2026
Word of the year and its Russian adaptation
The occasion for the linguistic commentary was the decision by the compilers of the Collins dictionary, who named the English word mogging the word of 2026. It describes a situation in which one person outshines another in looks, confidence, or status. In Russian-speaking circles, the verb «могнуть» (mognut) has formed on this basis, and it is what has drawn the attention of philologists.
“The expressive part of language constantly needs recharging”
Valery Mokiyenko, Doctor of Philology and professor at St Petersburg University, explained the word's staying power by the fact that the familiar «переплюнуть» (outdo) no longer sounds fresh to the new generation. In his view, such word replacement is natural: expressions that once seemed fresh lose their force over time. “It is not about the fact that this is a borrowing — the expressive part of language constantly needs recharging,” the philologist noted in a conversation with NSN, as reported by Life.ru.
How widespread the word actually is
The professor clarified that not everyone uses «могнуть»: he had not heard the word from his own students. In his opinion, if a successful Russian analogue appears, young people may pick it up just as readily as a borrowing. Thus, mogging being named “word of the year” in an English dictionary and the actual frequency of its Russian counterpart are two different things: the dictionary award registers a word's prominence but does not guarantee its mass use in Russian-speaking speech.
