Why do people “throw out a trick” & what’s it got to do with the military?
What a trick he threw out! “Выкинул фортель” (“vykinul fortel” or “threw away a trick)! No, no one threw anything away, but they certainly surprised everyone.
‘Fortel’ comes from the German ‘vorteil’ or the Polish ‘fortyl’, meaning “advantage”. It has been slightly "adapted" in Russian. Initially, the word was used among military personnel. For them, a ‘fortel’ meant a "clever maneuver" or a "military ruse". It also permeated the artistic world, where it was used to describe a clever theatrical stunt.
By the 19th century, the word ‘fortel’ had become a regular fixture in Russian literature. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin was especially fond of it. In the story ‘Diary of a Provincial in St. Petersburg’, the protagonist offers the following advice: "Or another trick. If you're at a dead end, if you feel your tongue beginning to stiffen, write boldly: we'll talk about this another time – and then, silence!"
The word caught on so well in the local context that, over time, it came to be used to describe any eccentricity or eccentricity.
