I'm doing a little project comparing Russian hard and soft sounds. A source tells me that сок means juice, which I believe is correct. This source also tells me that there's a word that sounds like "syok" that means, "he lashed". I can't seem to find it in the dictionary. Is there a word like this? Or does it mean something else? Do you know how it's spelled in Russian? Thanks!

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    There is such a word as pointed in Yaroslav's answer - сечь (сёк is past tense), but I would never translate it as "to lash". It can be translated as to cut - "сечь мечом", to chop - "сечь дрова", to whip/swish - "сечь розгами". – Vilmar Mar 17 '15 at 5:47
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    Also, it shows the process rather than a single occasion, so он сёк would be translated as "he was cutting/chopping/whipping..." – Vilmar Mar 17 '15 at 9:14
  • The word "сечь", additionally, has а colloquial meaning - to understand something well, e.g. "Он хорошо сечёт в математике." "He knows math well" Wiktionary – Vitaly Mar 18 '15 at 20:07
  • Dictionaries usually only contain infinitive/nominative forms. Don't expect them to do conjugation/cases for you. – alamar Mar 27 '15 at 19:38

Yes, there is verb "сечь", which means "to lash".

"Cёк" is past tense and masculine-gendered form of it and, therefore, means "He lashed" (formally speaking, "he lashed" will be "он сёк" in Russian).


Etymologically speaking, сёк (>сечь) comes from the Indo-European root *sek- cutting, from which English derives words such as sock (in the sense of hitting), saw (both the tool and the use of it), derived forms with -sect(ion) (as in surgical removal, dissect, etc.), sect (as in a cutoff group or offshoot) and yes sex (as in the division between the genders).


Сёк (or sometimes сек - if the author of a text does not use ё) - is a verb which means that somebody was striking something (or somebody) with a scourge. Он сек = he was striking (with a scourge).

  • please, in future, try to provide answer which hasn't been already provided. – shabunc Mar 17 '15 at 10:16

There is also slang meaning of this word "Cёк" = quickly understood.

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