dedushka
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: dedushkas
form: dedushki
Etymology: From Russian де́душка (déduška).
Senses: examples: text: There they were, the devoted babushkas and dedushkas, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers of Bobby’s companions, lugging their bags, their bulging packages and bundles.
ref: 1980, Mike Davidow, Moscow Diary, Moscow: Progress Publishers, page 147:
text: More than anything else, even the health of my dedushka, I dreamed that he would invite me to the sixth-grade dance.[…]If I squinted my eyes, I could see the slumping form of my dedushka, standing at the bus stop, amidst young mothers, bored siblings, and Polish nannies.
ref: 2011, Irina Reyn, “Koshchei the Deathless”, in Nicole Steinberg, editor, Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens, Albany, N.Y.: Excelsior Editions, State University of New York Press, →ISBN, page 158:
text: “My grandparents are back. They’ve been roaming in the most remote parts of our territory.” Ethan examined her face with the trademark intensity she was coming to expect from him. “They know I exist?” “If I know my dedushka, he already has your entire background.”[…]“He and my babushka took an angry and confused teenager and taught her how to build herself up into a strong woman.”
ref: 2020, Nalini Singh, Alpha Night (Psy-Changeling Trinity), Berkley, →ISBN, page 205:
text: A mere five blocks later my dad pulls into the parking lot of my grandparents’ subsidized apartment complex and double parks. Without looking up he asks, “Can you get them? Try to make it quick.” He starts typing something on his phone, a new “smart” one that is almost a computer.[…]“Quick?” I ask him, with exaggerated shock. “Have you met your parents?” “I said try.” “There is no try, only do,” I say in a gravelly voice, then laugh. It forces my dad to look up and attempt a smile, but only for a second. Immediately after, he starts typing again. It makes me a little sad. We watched that entire movie series together, and now his phone is more interesting to him than me. At least my dedushka is happy to see me.
ref: 2021, Zhanna Slor, chapter 7, in At the End of the World, Turn Left, Agora Books, →ISBN:
glosses: A Russian grandfather.
examples: text: Yet, much as I loved to listen to it, standing there in the heat of all the lighted candles and dressed in my heavy shuba and felt boots, I invariably, halfway through the service, would begin to feel an intolerable pain across my shoulders which would spread across my back, gradually getting worse, until in the end I was forced to go to the back of the church and find a corner on a bench especially placed there for all the old babushkas and dedushkas who were also unable to bear the strain of standing throughout the whole service.
ref: 1984, Eugenie Fraser, “Before the Storm”, in The House by the Dvina: A Russian Childhood, Mainstream Publishing, →ISBN, pages 126–127:
text: The babushki and dedushki bring the flowers in from their garden plots on the outskirts of town.
ref: 1997 May 25, Toni Hull, “Old men in uniform still parade in Red Square on Victory Day”, in David M. Hennigan, editor, Sunday News, 74th year, number 36, Lancaster, Pa.: Lancaster Newspapers, →OCLC, page P-2, columns 1–2:
text: Whether I wanted to or not (I did not), the teens kept pushing me into a comparative mode to measure one kind of “thing” (person, country) against another. They urged me to tell them—“typical Russian teenagers” in “typical Russian schools”—about “typical American teenagers” in “typical American schools.” […] Could I compare the metal detectors blocking the entryways to some inner-city schools to the babushki and dedushki guarding their school doors?
ref: 2000, Fran Markowitz, “High School in the Russian Federation”, in Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Russia, Urbana, Ill.; Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, →ISBN, part 2 (Tracing the Changes; or, What Changes?), page 75:
text: And I’m telling you that he left Nikitkin and passed by some dedushka. The [dedushka] said: “Take me where I’m going.” And he sat that dedushka [down in his cart]. And so, they drove and drove, he says, heading somewhere. Then, he says, “The dedushka got lost somewhere and I was alone. And I went everywhere.”[…]A horse is coming. On it is sitting a dedushka.
ref: 2005, Margaret Paxson, transl., Solovyovo: The Story of Memory in a Russian Village, Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Bloomington, Ind.; Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, pages 132 and 138:
text: “No one takes them seriously,” Dima said. “They’re just washed-up old men. They brought speakers to the square today. Played the old marching songs. All these old dedushkas stomping around singing along at the tops of their lungs! Everyone was heckling. They’re a joke, Yarik.”
ref: 2014, Josh Weil, The Great Glass Sea, Grove Press, →ISBN:
text: It was a ballad that contained her landscape and her people: […] kerchief-clad babushki in long, threadbare skirts, stooped and toiling in the plentiful vegetable gardens; dedushki in overalls harvesting the bounty of orchards planted almost a century earlier and still happily bearing fruit; […]
ref: 2022, Robert Chursinoff, “Los Angeles, California, November 2004”, in The Descendants, Gibsons, B.C.: Nightwood Editions, →ISBN:
glosses: A Russian old man.
Coordinate terms: babushka