What does the expression “with sin in half” mean?
When someone does their job poorly, it may be said that they achieved the desired result “с грехом пополам” (“s grekhom popolam”) or “with sin in half”. But, what does this have to do with sins?
In the old days, sin was not only a violation of religious commandments, but also simple mistakes were called sins. For example, Russian poet Alexander Pushkin spoke of the main character as a man who “remembered, though not without sin, two verses from the Aeneid” in his poem ‘Eugene Onegin’. That is, with mistakes, but knew fragments of the poem in Latin.
Over time, the expression began to be used to emphasize carelessness and mistakes in affairs or their implementation with great effort. “Having sat in the district school for five years, Foma, with a sin in half, graduated from four classes,” is how writer Maxim Gorky describes the main character in the novel ‘Foma Gordeyev’.
An English equivalent would be: “By the skin of one’s teeth.”
