What does the expression “to be sent out into the world” mean?
When a person sadly says: “Его пустили по миру” (“Ego pustili po miru“) or “They have been sent out into the world”, it means that things are not going well for them. What has happened and where should they go?
The expression “to be sent out into the world” means that a person has found themselves on the verge of poverty, without any means. And now they only have one way out – to go and beg for alms. That is, “to go out into the world” or “to walk with an outstretched hand”. Writer Vladimir Soloukhin tells about the heroines of the book ‘Dew Drop’: “Here live two women – Aunt Daria and her daughter Marusya. There is no plowman. There is no mover. There is no sower. Of course, in the old village, you would have to go around the village, begging, asking, borrowing, if you simply do not go out into the world with a canvas bag.”
And a character in Dmitry Grigorovich's story ‘Anton Goremyka’, in despair, complains that the estate manager has brought him to an extremely dire situation. “Now, at least - the time has come to pay the poll tax to the landowner, but where will I get [the money]? From where? He has ruined me and sent me into the world and now he threatens me: He says, I will send you to soldiery and to a settlement, I won't look, he says, that you have a wife, that's what he says…”
An English equivalent would be: “To bring to beggary.”
