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# 34. Irony and figurative language

**On this page**

1. [1. Irony: what it is and how Ukrainian marks it](#1-irony-what-it-is-and-how-ukrainian-marks-it)
2. [2. Ironic particles and answers](#2-ironic-particles-and-answers)
3. [3. Ironic diminutives, augmentatives and vocatives](#3-ironic-diminutives-augmentatives-and-vocatives)
4. [4. Ironic politeness and sarcasm](#4-ironic-politeness-and-sarcasm)
5. [5. Hyperbole and litotes](#5-hyperbole-and-litotes)
6. [6. Metaphor and metonymy in everyday Ukrainian](#6-metaphor-and-metonymy-in-everyday-ukrainian)
7. [7. Idioms and multiword expressions](#7-idioms-and-multiword-expressions)
8. [8. Proverbs and sayings](#8-proverbs-and-sayings)
9. [9. The folk song: parallelism, symbols, fixed epithets](#9-the-folk-song-parallelism-symbols-fixed-epithets)
10. [10. Euphemism and taboo](#10-euphemism-and-taboo)
11. [11. Deltas by style and variety](#11-deltas-by-style-and-variety)
12. [12. How Mova handles it](#12-how-mova-handles-it)
13. [13. Sources](#13-sources)

Figurative language says one thing and means another: irony means the opposite or a mocking version of what it says, hyperbole more, litotes less, metaphor and metonymy something else by likeness or contiguity, an idiom something its words do not compose, a euphemism something its words avoid. Ukrainian has the general mechanisms of all of these and a stock of its own markers: ironic particles and answers (*ну*, *аякже*, *ага*, *авжеж*, *еге ж*, *ще б пак*), the **ironic diminutive** and the **ironic vocative**, idioms and proverbs drawn from village life, and the imagery of the **folk song** — psychological parallelism of nature and feeling, fixed epithets (*чисте поле*, *синє море*, *червона калина*), plant and bird symbols. This chapter describes these with examples (public-domain texts or constructed), cites the open Ukrainian research on idioms and multiword expressions, counts what the Leipzig news corpus shows (2026-11-06), and says what Mova reads: its irony detector and expression lens are English; its Ukrainian fact extractor parses idioms literally.

Contents

1. [Irony: what it is and how Ukrainian marks it](#1-irony-what-it-is-and-how-ukrainian-marks-it)
2. [Ironic particles and answers](#2-ironic-particles-and-answers)
3. [Ironic diminutives, augmentatives and vocatives](#3-ironic-diminutives-augmentatives-and-vocatives)
4. [Ironic politeness and sarcasm](#4-ironic-politeness-and-sarcasm)
5. [Hyperbole and litotes](#5-hyperbole-and-litotes)
6. [Metaphor and metonymy in everyday Ukrainian](#6-metaphor-and-metonymy-in-everyday-ukrainian)
7. [Idioms and multiword expressions](#7-idioms-and-multiword-expressions)
8. [Proverbs and sayings](#8-proverbs-and-sayings)
9. [The folk song: parallelism, symbols, fixed epithets](#9-the-folk-song-parallelism-symbols-fixed-epithets)
10. [Euphemism and taboo](#10-euphemism-and-taboo)
11. [Deltas by style and variety](#11-deltas-by-style-and-variety)
12. [How Mova handles it](#12-how-mova-handles-it)
13. [Sources](#13-sources)

Related chapters: particles in [30. Pragmatics: an overview](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/30-pragmatics-overview/) §3; diminutives in [17. Derivation: suffixes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/17-derivation-suffixes/) and [32. Politeness and hedging](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/32-politeness-and-hedging/) §6; multiword expressions in [19. The lexicon: where the words come from, multiword expressions and register](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/19-lexicon-mwe-register/); songs as a style in [37. Register and variation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/37-register-and-variation/); the English chapter [34. Irony and figurative language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/34-irony-and-figurative-language/) for the theories (Grice, echoic mention, pretence, incongruity).

---

## 1. Irony: what it is and how Ukrainian marks it

Verbal irony is an utterance whose literal evaluation is the opposite of what the speaker means, typically praise for something bad (*Чудова погода!* 'Lovely weather!' in a downpour). The English chapter sets out the accounts: Grice's flouting of quality, echoic mention, pretence, and the incongruity model that Mova's detector follows. They apply to Ukrainian unchanged. What differs is the inventory of cues:

| cue | Ukrainian | example | meaning |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ironic particle or answer | *ну*, *аякже*, *ага*, *авжеж*, *еге ж*, *ще б пак*, *щас* (colloquial) | *Аякже, так він тобі й віддасть!* | 'Oh sure, as if he'd give it back to you!' |
| *так* + *і*/*й* + verb (disbelief) | *Так він і прийде!* | 'As if he'd come!' (= he won't) |  |
| ironic diminutive | *-ик*, *-чик*, *-очк-* on a criticised thing or person | *Ну й проєктик!* | 'Some project (that is)!' |
| ironic vocative or title | *пане розумнику*, *друже*, *герою* | *Ну що, герою, допрацювався?* | 'Well, hero, see what your work got you?' |
| ironic politeness | over-formal *Ви*, *дуже дякую*, *будьте ласкаві* | *Дуже Вам дякую за таку «допомогу».* | 'Thanks so much for that "help".' |
| quotation marks | «…» around the evaluated word | *«Допомога»* | the echoic mention made visible |
| incongruous praise | positive word + negative situation | *Молодець, розбив вазу!* | 'Well done, you broke the vase!' |
| exclamation + rhetorical question | *Ну хіба не геній?!* | 'Isn't he a genius?!' |  |

Intonation (a drawn-out, flattened or exaggerated contour) carries much of spoken irony; text has only the particles, punctuation and emoji.

## 2. Ironic particles and answers

| form | romanization | sincere use | ironic use |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| *аякже* | aiakzhe | 'of course' (literary, warm) | 'yeah, right' — *Аякже, чекай!* 'Sure, keep waiting!' |
| *авжеж* | avzhezh | 'certainly' | 'of course (not)' with a mocking intonation |
| *ага* | aha | 'uh-huh, yes' (colloquial) | *Ага, зараз!* 'Yeah, right away!' (= never) |
| *еге ж* | ehe zh | 'yes, right' (colloquial) | agreement that disagrees |
| *ще б пак* | shche b pak | 'I should say so' | 'as if!' in context |
| *так і* / *так тобі й* + future | — | — | disbelief: *Так тобі й повірили!* 'As if they'd believe you!' |
| *от тобі й маєш* | ot tobi y maiesh | — | 'well, there you go' (unwelcome surprise) |
| *оце так* | otse tak | 'wow' (admiration) | 'well, that's just great' |
| *ну* + evaluative | nu | 'well' | *Ну, ти й розумник!* 'Well, aren't you clever!' |
| *нівроку* | nivroku | 'touch wood; not bad at all' (apotropaic praise) | 'quite a lot', of something unwanted: *Боргів нівроку* 'debts aplenty' |
| *щас* (colloquial, surzhyk) | shchas | 'now' | *Щас!* 'Yeah, right!' |

The sincere and the ironic use of *аякже*, *авжеж*, *ага* differ in context and intonation, not in form. In the news corpus these words are rare and mostly in quoted speech: *авжеж* 12, *ага* 7, *аякже* 1, *ще б пак* 7, *нівроку* 7 (Leipzig news 2024, 14.2 M words, 2026-11-06); in Brown-UK, which contains fiction, *аякже* 4, *ага* 2, *авжеж* 2 in 1.04 M words — ironic agreement belongs to dialogue.

The construction *так* + *і/й* + future of disbelief deserves its own note: *Так він і прийде* is syntactically a declarative about the future but asserts the opposite, an irony grammaticalised into a construction that needs no context to be read as negative.

## 3. Ironic diminutives, augmentatives and vocatives

The diminutive's affection (chapter 32 §6) is reversed when the speaker belittles: the thing is small because it is worthless, the person small because they are not to be taken seriously.

| form | example | gloss | effect |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| diminutive of a thing | *Ну й зарплатка в тебе!* | 'Some salary you've got!' | contempt for the size |
| diminutive of an achievement | *Подали свій законопроєктик.* | 'They submitted their little bill.' | belittling |
| diminutive of a person | *Розумничок знайшовся.* | 'Look, a little clever-clogs has turned up.' | mockery |
| diminutive of a title | *начальничок*, *депутатик* | 'a petty boss', 'a little deputy' | contempt |
| augmentative | *розумище*, *героїще* | 'a great brain', 'a great hero' | mock praise |
| vocative of a positive noun | *Ну що, генію?* *Слухай, мудрецю…* | 'Well, genius?' 'Listen, wise man…' | ironic address |
| *пане* + insult or mock title | *Пане всезнайко…* | 'Mr Know-it-all…' | sarcastic formality |
| affectionate address to an opponent | *Голубчику, ви помиляєтеся.* | 'My dear fellow, you are mistaken.' | condescension |

The vocative strengthens irony because it addresses: *Ну, розумнику, і що тепер?* 'Well, smart guy, what now?' is a mock title in a living case. English has *genius*, *Einstein*, *smart guy* in the same role but no case to mark it.

## 4. Ironic politeness and sarcasm

Excessive politeness to an equal, or politeness about a harm, is ironic: *Дякую, що нагадали* 'Thank you for reminding me' (of something painful), *Будьте такі ласкаві, не заважайте* 'Be so kind as not to interfere', the sudden switch from *ти* to *Ви* in a quarrel among friends (*Ви, шановний, могли б і помовчати* 'You, my good sir, might keep quiet'). The switch of pronoun is itself the signal; English cannot reproduce it and has to use *sir*, *my friend* or tone.

Sarcasm, irony with a target, is common in Ukrainian social media. Dementieva, Babakov and Fraser (2025, `dementieva-2025-emobench-ua-benchmark-dataset-emotion`) give as an example of anger in their Ukrainian tweet benchmark a sarcastic question (*ти з мене … іздіваєшся?!* 'are you kidding me?!', with a colloquial, surzhyk-coloured verb for standard *знущаєшся*) — irony that their annotators labelled by the emotion it expresses, not as irony; EmoBench-UA has no irony label. No open Ukrainian irony or sarcasm corpus is among the Ukrainian papers of the research library on 2026-11-06.

## 5. Hyperbole and litotes

| figure | Ukrainian | gloss |
| --- | --- | --- |
| hyperbole | *Я тобі сто разів казав!* | 'I've told you a hundred times!' |
|  | *Чекали цілу вічність.* | 'We waited an eternity.' |
|  | *Тут яблуку ніде впасти.* | 'There's no room for an apple to fall' (= packed) |
|  | *До смерті хочу спати.* | 'I'm dying for sleep.' |
|  | *Мільйон справ.* | 'A million things to do.' |
| litotes | *Непогано!* | 'Not bad!' (= good) |
|  | *Він не дурний.* | 'He's no fool.' (= clever) |
|  | *Не можу сказати, що мені сподобалося.* | 'I can't say I liked it.' (= I disliked it) |
|  | *Не без того.* | 'Not without it' (= yes, somewhat) |
| meiosis | *Трохи запізнився — на дві години.* | 'A bit late — by two hours.' (ironic) |

Litotes with *не-* adjectives (*непоганий*, *нерідко* 'not rarely, often', *немало* 'not few, a lot') is lexicalised in Ukrainian: *нерідко* and *немало* are ordinary words, no longer felt as figures.

## 6. Metaphor and metonymy in everyday Ukrainian

Everyday metaphors (examples constructed):

| source domain | expression | gloss |
| --- | --- | --- |
| body for quality | *золоті руки* | 'golden hands' (= very skilful) |
| metal for character | *залізні нерви*, *сталевий характер* | 'nerves of iron', 'steel character' |
| temperature for emotion | *гаряча суперечка*, *холодна зустріч* | 'a heated argument', 'a cool reception' |
| heart for feeling | *від щирого серця*, *серце болить* | 'from the bottom of one's heart', 'one's heart aches' |
| path for life | *життєвий шлях*, *на роздоріжжі* | 'path of life', 'at the crossroads' |
| animal for person | *хитрий лис*, *вовк в овечій шкурі*, *осел* | 'a sly fox', 'wolf in sheep's clothing', 'donkey (fool)' |
| plant for person | *калинонька* (a girl), *дуб* (a strong or dull man) | — |

Metonymy: *Київ заявив* 'Kyiv declared' (= the government), *Банкова* (the street of the President's Office), *Грушевського* (the parliament's street), *випити склянку* 'to drink a glass', *читати Шевченка* 'to read Shevchenko', *уся хата сміялася* 'the whole house laughed'. A news reader has to resolve these place-for-institution metonymies, which in Ukrainian political reporting are frequent and specific (*Банкова*, *Печерськ*).

## 7. Idioms and multiword expressions

### 7.1 Examples

| idiom | romanization | literal | meaning |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| *водити за носа* | vodyty za nosa | 'lead by the nose' | to deceive, string along |
| *пальцем не поворухнути* | paltsem ne povorukhnuty | 'not move a finger' | to do nothing |
| *бити байдики* | byty baidyky | 'beat the *baidyky*' (sticks) | to idle |
| *точити ляси* | tochyty liasy | 'turn balusters' | to chatter idly |
| *накивати п'ятами* | nakyvaty piatamy | 'wave one's heels' | to run away |
| *дати гарбуза* | daty harbuza | 'give a pumpkin' | to turn down a suitor |
| *впасти в око* | vpasty v oko | 'fall into the eye' | to catch someone's eye, appeal |
| *як кіт наплакав* | yak kit naplakav | 'as much as a cat has cried' | very little |
| *ні пари з вуст* | ni pary z vust | 'not a breath from the lips' | not a word |
| *скакати в гречку* | skakaty v hrechku | 'jump into the buckwheat' | to commit adultery |
| *ведмежа послуга* | vedmezha posluha | 'a bear's service' | a favour that harms |
| *як грім серед ясного неба* | yak hrim sered yasnoho neba | 'like thunder from a clear sky' | out of the blue |
| *мати голову на плечах* | — | 'have a head on one's shoulders' | to be sensible |
| *з місця в кар'єр* | — | 'from standstill to gallop' | straight away |

Idioms keep their inflection and much of their word order freedom: *Він мене за носа водить*, *водили нас за носа роками* — a parser sees ordinary verbs, objects and prepositional phrases, and the idiom must be recognised by its lemmas and their relations, not by a fixed string. In the Leipzig news corpus (2026-11-06) idioms of this kind are infrequent in news style — *пальцем не поворух-* 1, *бити байдики* 1, *ведмежу послугу* 4, *як грім серед ясного неба* 3, *ляси* 9, *п'ятами* 7 (mostly *накивати п'ятами*) — while set expressions of public life dominate (§7.2).

### 7.2 What the open research found

Sytar, Shvedova and Kanishcheva (2026, `sytar-2026-ukrainian-multiword-expressions-corpus-creation`) built the first Ukrainian MWE corpus under the PARSEME 2.0 scheme: 12,078 sentences (198,555 tokens) of interviews from *Ukrainian Week* (2013–2016), taken from GRAC, with 5,993 annotated expressions in verbal, nominal, adjectival/adverbial and functional categories. Their findings:

- The most frequent type is not the idiom but the **inherently adpositional verb** (1,209 contexts), whose preposition changes the meaning (*розраховувати* 'calculate' against *розраховувати на* 'count on'); nominal, adverbial and verbal idioms follow (912, 815, 523). The distribution is long-tailed.
- Ukrainian phraseology traditionally counts only idioms proper as phraseological units and leaves out proverbs, sayings, clichés and etiquette formulas; the MWE view includes them all.
- Recent texts shift the meaning of known idioms: *імперія зла* 'evil empire', Reagan's phrase for the USSR, now designates Russia as continuing Soviet imperial policy.
- Multiword particles (*все ж таки*, *навряд чи*, *хіба що*, *хоч би*) are so frequent that the authors propose a new type, **particle idioms**.
- Agreement between two annotators reached an MWE-based F-score of 54: identifying Ukrainian MWEs is hard even for linguists, because of free word order, inflection and variants.

Petruniv, Makogon and Kyslyi (2026, `petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom`) linked Ukrainian–English idiom pairs from several phraseological dictionaries and an English idiom corpus by vector similarity, added figurative meanings, example sentences from the UberText fiction corpus and an automatic score of **semantic transparency** (how close the literal wording is to the meaning), and evaluated six large language models on 65,723 translations. All models translated idioms much worse **into** Ukrainian than out of it; the main failure was literal translation that keeps the meaning but loses the idiom, not distortion of meaning; naming the source idiom in the prompt helped most models; and transparency correlated only weakly with translation quality (r = 0.136), so the difficulty is phraseological competence, not the opacity of the idiom.

## 8. Proverbs and sayings

Ukrainian proverbs (*прислів'я*) and sayings (*приказки*) are part of everyday speech and rhetoric. A selection (traditional, public domain):

| proverb | romanization (first words) | gloss | meaning |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| *Тиха вода греблю рве.* | Tykha voda hrebliu rve | 'Quiet water tears the dam.' | still waters run deep; beware the quiet ones |
| *Не кажи «гоп», поки не перескочиш.* | Ne kazhy hop | 'Don't say "hop" until you've jumped over.' | don't count your chickens |
| *Що посієш, те й пожнеш.* | Shcho posiiesh | 'What you sow, you reap.' |  |
| *Не плюй у криницю — знадобиться води напитися.* | Ne pliui u krynytsiu | 'Don't spit in the well — you'll need to drink from it.' | don't burn bridges |
| *Яблуко від яблуні недалеко падає.* | Yabluko vid iabluni | 'The apple falls not far from the apple tree.' |  |
| *Вовка ноги годують.* | Vovka nohy hoduiut | 'The wolf is fed by its legs.' | you have to move to earn |
| *Не посій — не вродиться.* | Ne posii | 'Don't sow (imperative) — it won't grow.' | no effort, no result |
| *Крути, верти — мусиш умерти.* | Kruty, verty | 'Twist and turn — you must die.' |  |
| *Дівка як верба: де посади, там прийметься.* | Divka yak verba | 'A girl is like a willow: wherever you plant her, she takes root.' |  |

Their grammar is the grammar of generic statements: the **generic second person** (*Що посієш, те й пожнеш*: 'you' is anyone), the **generic imperative** in a conditional or concessive sense (*Крути, верти — мусиш умерти*; Simovych 1919, `simovych-1919-hramatyka-ukrainskoi-movy-dlia`, § 253, gives this proverb and *Не посій — не вродиться* as imperatives of concession and condition, and *Дівка як верба…* from Nechui-Levytskyi as the imperative of "life experience"), the **dash** for a missing conditional conjunction, **asyndeton**, **parallel halves** and **rhyme or assonance** (*Без труда нема плода* 'No labour, no fruit').

A proverb is quoted to perform an act — advice, warning, consolation, a reproach — of which it states only the general rule; the hearer must apply it (the relevance step of chapter 33 §10). Proverbs are also turned ironically: *Тиха вода греблю рве* said of a shy colleague who has just won an argument.

## 9. The folk song: parallelism, symbols, fixed epithets

The folk song is the deepest store of Ukrainian figurative language, and literature from Kotliarevskyi and Shevchenko onwards drew on it. Its grammar as a style is described in chapter 37; here its figures.

### 9.1 Psychological parallelism

A picture of nature is set beside a human situation, with no *як* 'like' between them; the hearer draws the comparison. Shevchenko uses the pattern in a song of his own (*Тече вода в синє море*, 1838, public domain):

> *Тече вода в синє море, / Та не витікає; / Шука козак свою долю, / А долі немає.* 'The water flows into the blue sea / and does not flow out of it; / the Cossack seeks his fortune, / and there is no fortune.'

The two couplets have the same shape: a subject, a verb of motion or search, and a negated result. The water that never returns and the fortune that never comes are equated by position alone. The opening of his *Причинна* (1837) sets a storm before a human drama: *Реве та стогне Дніпр широкий, / Сердитий вітер завива, / Додолу верби гне високі, / Горами хвилю підійма* 'The broad Dnipro roars and groans, / the angry wind howls, / bends the tall willows to the ground, / raises the waves as high as mountains'. The nature verbs are human (*стогне* 'groans', *сердитий* 'angry'): personification prepares the parallel.

Franko's *Зів'яле листя* (1896, public domain) makes the parallel a direct metaphor in the folk manner: *Ой ти, дівчино, з горіха зерня, / Чом твоє серденько — колюче терня?* 'O girl, you kernel of a nut, / why is your little heart a prickly thorn?' — a vocative, two plant metaphors, an affectionate diminutive (*серденько*) and a dash for the missing copula.

### 9.2 Symbols

| symbol | romanization | typical meaning in song |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *калина* | kalyna | the girl, maidenhood, love; later Ukraine itself (*Ой у лузі червона калина похилилася*, the song of the Sich Riflemen, 1914) |
| *верба* | verba | home, the native land, also sorrow |
| *явір* | yavir | the young man, often in grief |
| *сокіл* | sokil | the young man, the Cossack |
| *зозуля* | zozulia | fate, mourning, the mother |
| *голуб*, *голубка* | holub, holubka | the lovers |
| *калина над водою*, *вода* | — | love, separation, the passing of time |
| *чайка* | chaika | the widow, the abandoned mother |
| *кінь* | kin | the Cossack's companion, the road to war |
| *рута-м'ята* | ruta-miata | maidenhood, the wedding |

### 9.3 Fixed epithets

The song attaches stable adjectives to nouns, whatever the context: *чисте поле* 'clear (open) field', *синє море* 'blue sea', *буйний вітер* 'wild wind', *сива зозуля* 'grey cuckoo', *ясні зорі* 'bright stars', *тихі води* 'quiet waters', *зелений гай* 'green grove', *червона калина* 'red guelder rose', *вороний кінь* 'black horse', *чорні брови* 'black brows', *карі очі* 'brown eyes', *біле личко* 'white little face', *молодий козак* 'young Cossack', *дівчина молода* 'young girl', *мати старенька* 'old (dim.) mother'. Two grammatical marks go with them: the epithet may **follow** its noun (*дівчина молода*, *мати старенька*), against the prose order adjective–noun ([22. Phrases](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/22-phrases/)), and it may take the old **short form** (*зелен гай*, *ясен сокіл*, *повен місяць* 'full moon'), which prose uses only in a few predicative adjectives (*повен*, *певен*, *винен*). A tagger trained on prose meets *зелен* as an unknown or a noun.

### 9.4 Other figures of the song

- **Address to nature** with the vocative: *Ой не світи, місяченьку* 'O do not shine, little moon', *Ой ти, вітре буйний*. The vocative of an object (*вітре*, *місяченьку*, *калино*) is normal in song and rare in prose.
- **Diminutives in clusters**: *рученьки*, *ніженьки*, *голівонька*, *серденько*, *матінка*, *доленька* — affection and pity (Simovych 1919 § 112 notes their use in laments).
- **Tautological pairs** (*тужить-плаче*, *рута-м'ята*, *стежки-доріжки*) and **repetition** of a line with a variation.
- **Negative comparison** (*не … а …*): 'it is not X that does Y, it is Z', the Slavic folk formula of revealing an image as a person.

## 10. Euphemism and taboo

| domain | euphemism | gloss | plain word |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| death | *відійшов у вічність*, *відійшов у кращий світ*, *упокоївся*, *його не стало* | 'passed into eternity', 'went to a better world', 'found rest', 'he is no more' | *помер* 'died' |
| death, war (army slang) | *двохсотий* (from "cargo 200") | 'two-hundred' = killed | *загиблий* |
| wounding, war (army slang) | *трьохсотий* ("300") | 'three-hundred' = wounded | *поранений* |
| the devil (old taboo) | *нечистий*, *лихий*, *той, що в болоті сидить*, *враг* | 'the unclean one', 'the evil one' | *чорт*, *диявол* |
| illness | *недуга* (literary), *захворіти на що* | — | *хвороба* |
| disability | *люди з інвалідністю* (current official usage) | 'people with disabilities' | older *інваліди* |
| old age | *літні люди*, *люди поважного віку* | 'elderly people', 'people of respectable age' | *старі* |
| pregnancy | *у цікавому становищі*, *чекає дитину* | 'in an interesting condition', 'expecting' | *вагітна* |
| bodily needs | *вийти*, *помити руки* | 'step out', 'wash one's hands' | — |
| dismissal | *звільнити за власним бажанням* | 'release at one's own request' | *вигнати* |

The war vocabulary shows the euphemism's two registers: in the Leipzig news corpus of 2024 the official *загиблий* (about 2,460 forms) and *поранений* (about 2,080) dominate, while the soldiers' *двохсотий* and *трьохсотий* occur about 16 and 11 times, in quoted speech (word forms counted with `grep -ow`, 2026-11-06). The euphemisms of death (*відійшов у вічність* 13 times, *у кращий світ* 3) belong to obituaries.

## 11. Deltas by style and variety

Each row lists what a style or variety adds to, or replaces in, the figurative inventory of the literary standard.

| style / variety | grammar delta | lexical delta |
| --- | --- | --- |
| folk song | postposed and short-form epithets (*дівчина молода*, *зелен гай*); vocatives of nature; dash for the copula; parallel couplets without *як* | symbols of §9.2; fixed epithets; diminutive clusters |
| proverb | generic 2nd person and generic imperative; asyndeton; dash for a conditional | rhyme, assonance; village imagery |
| colloquial irony | *так і* + future of disbelief; *ну* + evaluative + *й*; ironic vocative | *аякже*, *ага*, *авжеж*, *ще б пак*, ironic diminutives |
| surzhyk humour | Russian forms inside Ukrainian grammar used for comic characterisation | *щас*, *канєшно*, *ну да*; chapter 37 |
| journalism, politics | place-for-institution metonymy | *Банкова*, *Печерськ*; reactivated idioms (*імперія зла*) |
| army and war speech (since 2014, 2022) | terse numerals as nouns (*двохсотий*) | *двохсотий*, *трьохсотий*, *бавовна* ('cotton' = an explosion, from a Russian euphemism ironically reused), *орки* for the invaders |
| internet, youth | quotation marks and emoji as irony markers; English insertions | *крінж*, *рофл*, *ору* ('I'm screaming' = laughing) |

## 12. How Mova handles it

### 12.1 Irony, idioms and domains: English only

- The irony detector ([`prag/src/irony.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/prag/)) scores incongruity from English lemma lists: `POSITIVE`, `NEGATIVE`, `POSITIVE_VERBS` (*love*, *enjoy*, *adore*, *like*, *appreciate*), negative `SITUATIONS`, `EMOTICONS`, `LAUGHTER` (*lol*, *haha* …), `PHRASES` (*yeah right*, *oh great*, *just what I needed*), `CONTRAST` (*but*, *although* …), `ENDED`, with `THRESHOLD = 2`. It takes `en::annotate::Word` trees. No Ukrainian particle of §2, diminutive or vocative is in it; emoji are the only language-neutral cue, and the detector is not run on Ukrainian.
- The expression lens ([`prag/src/lens.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/prag/)) finds idioms, proverbs and phrases with their meanings and register labels in the English Wiktionary's expression base (`global::expressions_in`). There is no Ukrainian expression base. The raw Ukrainian Wiktionary and the English Wiktionary's Ukrainian entries are held as dumps for learning and tests (CC BY-SA; [Data, libraries and licences](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/repo-docs/data/)), but no Ukrainian idiom list is built from them.
- The Ukrainian resources of §7.2 — the MWE corpus of Sytar et al. and the SimIdioms corpus — are not imported into Mova.
- `world domains` and the absurdity matrix that meets the irony detector read English.

### 12.2 The Ukrainian fact extractor

`kg` ([`kg/src/uk.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/kg/)) parses idioms, proverbs and song lines as literal facts, and rejects most ironic utterances at its gates (*й* and *як* are on its conjunction list; commas and questions are rejected). Measured 2026-11-06 (CPU, `kg parse` from the worktree at commit `ac9a23149`, VESUM, empty name list):

| sentence | `kg` output | verdict |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *Він водить мене за носа.* | predicate *водити*; subject *він*; `object:v_zna` *я*; `adverbial:за+v_zna` *ніс* | literal; the idiom 'deceive' not recognised |
| *Він пальцем не поворухнув.* | predicate *поворухнути* (perf., neg.); subject *він*; `object:v_oru` *палець* | literal; 'did nothing' not recognised |
| *Тиха вода греблю рве.* | predicate *рвати*; subject *вода*; `attribute:subject` *тихий*; `object:v_zna` *гребля* | correct literal structure; the proverb as a generic warning not recognised |
| *Червона калина похилилася.* | predicate *похилитися*; subject *калина*; `attribute:subject` *червоний* | literal; the symbol not read |
| *Він відійшов у кращий світ.* | predicate *відійти*; subject *він*; `adverbial:у+v_zna` *світ*; attribute *кращий* | literal motion; the euphemism for death not recognised |
| *Ну ти й розумник.* | rejected: conjunction (*й*) | the ironic construction is out of reach |
| *Аякже.* | not covered by the rules | the answer particle alone is not a sentence for `kg` |
| *Ой у полі верба рясна.* | not covered by the rules | the song line (interjection + verbless clause with a postposed adjective) is not parsed |

### 12.3 Not there yet

- No Ukrainian irony cues, no irony label for Ukrainian.
- No Ukrainian idiom, proverb or euphemism lexicon; the open Ukrainian MWE and idiom corpora are not imported.
- No recognition of ironic diminutives, ironic vocatives or the *так і* + future construction.
- No model of folk-song symbols or fixed epithets; the postposed and short-form adjectives of song are a parsing problem `kg` does not handle.
- Metaphor and metonymy are not detected in either language.

## 13. Sources

- Sytar, H., Shvedova, M., Kanishcheva, O. 2026. Ukrainian Multiword Expressions Corpus: Creation, Annotation, and Linguistic Analysis. MWE 2026. `sytar-2026-ukrainian-multiword-expressions-corpus-creation` (CC BY 4.0)
- Petruniv, Y., Makogon, I., Kyslyi, R. 2026. SimIdioms: A Corpus and Benchmark for Ukrainian Idiom Translation. UNLP. `petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom` (CC BY 4.0)
- Dementieva, D., Babakov, N., Fraser, A. 2025. EmoBench-UA: A Benchmark Dataset for Emotion Detection in Ukrainian. Findings of EMNLP. `dementieva-2025-emobench-ua-benchmark-dataset-emotion` (CC BY 4.0)
- Simovych, Vasyl. 1919. *Граматика української мови…* § 112 (diminutives, laments), § 253 (imperative in proverbs). `simovych-1919-hramatyka-ukrainskoi-movy-dlia` (public domain)
- Shevchenko, Taras. *Причинна* (1837); *Тече вода в синє море* (1838). Public domain.
- Franko, Ivan. *Зів'яле листя* (1896). Public domain.
- Traditional proverbs and folk songs: public domain.
- Leipzig Corpora Collection, Ukrainian news 2024 (CC BY): phrase counts with `grep`, 2026-11-06. Brown-UK (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): counts only.
- Mova: [`prag/src/irony.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/prag/), [`prag/src/lens.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/prag/), [Data, libraries and licences](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/repo-docs/data/), [`kg/src/uk.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/kg/).
- The English counterpart: [34. Irony and figurative language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/34-irony-and-figurative-language/).
- [← previous 33. Implicature and presupposition](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/33-implicature-and-presupposition/)
- [next → 35. Reference and coreference](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/35-reference-and-coreference/)
- [↑ back to Ukrainian: a reference manual for Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/uk/)