🤖 Literally, in English
“To pour from the empty into the hollow.”
З пустого в порожнє переливати. Z pustoho v porozhnye perelyvaty
🤨 What does it ACTUALLY mean? →
🇬🇧 What you'd actually say
“To talk in circles and get nowhere.”
also: “It's all just hot air.” · “We're going round in circles.”
- 📖 Meaning
- To have a long discussion that produces nothing.
- 💡 Why it's funny
- Both containers are empty, so the activity is not merely pointless — it is physically impossible, and someone is doing it anyway, at length.
- 🧭 Closest English idiom
- “Going round in circles.”
- 📝 Explanation
- The standard verdict on a meeting that lasted two hours and decided nothing, or on an argument that keeps restating the same positions.
🧠 Learn
- go round in circles (idiom) — to keep discussing something without progress — товкти воду в ступі “We went round in circles for an hour.”
- hot air (noun) — talk that sounds important but means nothing — порожні балачки “His speech was all hot air.”
🗣 In context
Дві години наради — з пустого в порожнє переливали.
A two-hour meeting spent talking in circles.
🎧 Hear the contrast
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