Consider the meaning of phraseology "bribes smooth." This is usually said when nothing can be decisively achieved from someone. True, not everything is so bad. Sometimes a person cannot help in one thing, but he will certainly support in another. Let’s analyze a stable phrase today. History, as always, is fraught with a lot of interesting and exciting.
The long history of corruption in Russia
It is well known that corruption is our Achilles heel, and quite a while ago. Or is it better to compare bribery with a cancerous tumor that metastases in all areas and greatly weakens the state organism? In any case, the problem will be the same - the love of officials for unaccounted-for incentives for them to fulfill their duties or to do it more briskly.
Sources indicate that phraseologism appeared in the 16th century, when Ivan the Terrible launched a full-scale campaign to combat bribery. The tool in this difficult case was “Sudebnik” (1550). Subsequently, it became a legal monument of the era.
If I may say so, the corporate culture of that time allowed officials to feed at the expense of their posts, but it was necessary to observe the measure. There were unspoken rules about how many and who could be taken, and those who violated them were punished. That is, the true sin of that time was not considered a bribe (as, for example, now), but only its excessiveness. The story is even more interesting than the meaning of phraseology “bribes are smooth.”
Meaning
The reader probably already understood that the “smoothness” of a bribe implies its poverty or complete absence. When a person is talked about in a similar vein, it means: he either has nothing to give, or he has the luxury of not giving bribes.
Here we must immediately say about the relativity of the saying. That is, the same person can be characterized both as rich and as poor, depending on which side of nature falls into the spotlight of public opinion. For example, a good philologist is unlikely to give odds to a computer programmer, therefore, in this sense, bribes are smooth from him (we have already revealed the meaning of phraseology a little earlier). But if you change the optics and the programmer suddenly needs a literary consultation about Russian writers of the 19th century, then the programmer will already be “poor”, and the philologist “rich”. In other words, the saying is distinguished by situationality, which means universality.
Business skills and saying
Like any other saying, the phraseologism “bribes of smoothness”, the meaning of which we are analyzing, needs a memorable example. And here there may be the most unexpected associations, but I remember The Godfather, the second film from the famous gangster saga.
The episode when the greedy Senator Pat Geary is trying to blackmail Michael Corleone and extort money from the latter. And he flatly refuses to pay. The subject of the dispute is a license, which makes it possible to engage in gambling business. This is exactly the case when a person is able to pay, but will not do it. So bribes are smooth from him (the meaning of phraseology in this case is similar). Despite the fact that Michael Corleone acts on the other side of the law, he still has ideas about good and evil, as well as honor and dignity. In turn, the greedy senator behaves inappropriately, so Michael refused to pay.
We hope that from now on the reader will not be at a loss if he is asked to explain the meaning of phraseological units of the “bribe smooth.” We have given everything necessary to solve the problem.