In November 2018, the guys from the YouTube channel Optimus Gang filmed a trash video of Zhmurka, which went viral and brought them hundreds of thousands of views and new subscribers. The theater of the absurd did not begin with a hanger, but with a new meme phrase that stuck in the minds of young Internet users.

What does the expression “sniff the bebra” mean?

A video about the adventures of friends with a shovel has gained several million views. The cinematic value of this arthouse has nothing to do with it. Rate a good trash. You will find the juice itself at 5:01 timecode.

An unusual reaction to the words “the case in the bag” puts me in a stupor. The meaning of the phrase should be sought in an emotional and situational context. He speaks of a clearly negative message, which is clearly reinforced by hitting the opponent in the head with a shovel.

If you do not analyze the components of the phrase “sniff the bebra”, then we can distinguish the following options for its semantic load:

1. hell no;
2. figurines;
3. yes go you (and more aggressive analogues).

The message of the phrase may change from the context of the previous dialogue. It can mean any rude denial or rejection that is appropriate at a particular moment in time.

A logical question arises, what does the word “bebra” or “bebr” mean? The design of the call to activate one’s smell receptors indicates that the accusative case is used (whom? what?). In this case, it is necessary to sniff whom? what? – bebra. This means that the nominative case of the word sounds like “bebra”.

It is possible that we are dealing with the dative case. In this case, we are talking about sniffing to whom? – bebra (what exactly you need to smell bebra – a rhetorical question). With this approach, the nominative case turns into the word “bebr”.

Bebra: origin and translation of the word

There are several official meanings of the word bebra:

Small town in Germany. Located in Hesse, about 13 thousand people live there. How can you smell the city? It is unlikely that the author of this iconic phrase knew about the existence of this settlement, but for educational purposes it should also be mentioned.
In Germany, there is also a river with the same name, it is a tributary of the Fulda River. Well, in the mentioned town there is a station of the same name.
In Old Spanish, bebra meant a first-harvest fig ripening on an old tree. The root of the word is bebé (baby), because the first harvest had some associations with the birth of a child. Over time, this word has changed and became breba (breba) and then breva (breva).
From Portuguese, the word bebra translates as “drunk” (after all, beber means “to drink”). Another meaning in the same language is a variety of black figs, large, long, with red flesh.
Among the peoples of the Indo-European language family of the Germanic and Balto-Slavic language groups, the word bebras had the original meaning of the word “brown”. Over time, it migrated to German (biber), Bulgarian (beaver), Polish (bóbr), Czech (bobr), Ukrainian (beaver), Russian (beaver) and even English (beaver).

When someone insists on sniffing bebro, it is worth assuming that you are offered to sniff the beaver. Enjoying the smell of a beaver is not a pleasant occupation. The semantic load and message, which we dealt with above, makes it clear that you will have to sniff a place that is not the most fragrant.

Smell the bebra = Smell the beaver. The first option sounds more colorful and touches more than the classical literary formulation.

How is “sniff the bebra” translated into Russian from Ukrainian?
Some sources unfoundedly claim that the word “bebra” is an element of Ukrainian youth slang. Its meaning is identical to the gross naming of the male sexual organ. You should not take on faith the fantasies of authors who are not related to Ukrainian youth.

First, the rational approach made it clear that we were faced with the word bebr, not bebra. Secondly, the youth of the central regions of Ukraine would rather use the well-known word of three letters to designate the male organ. Thirdly, the search query “bebra” in Google with a temporary filter from 01/01/2015 to 01/01/2019 does not return any relevant results. In a strange way, the use of the word “bebra” coincided with the release of the video on YouTube “It’s in the hat …”.

There is a certain logic in the statement about the Ukrainian origin of the meme phrase. The guys from OPTIMUS GANG often use Ukrainian words. It seems that in some regions (rather in rural areas) a beaver is called a bebr, because thanks to the fantasy of OG, such an unusual curse arose. And again we are back to the real meaning of the word – beaver.

Smell the bebra: song and popularity on Tik Tok

The booming social network Tik Tok found a place for this meme. Users began to insert a short fragment of the original video into their parodies. Often, to create a driving mood in TikTok, different songs began to be superimposed on “sniff the bebra”.

Downloading the song “Smell Bebra” has become an obsession for many users. However, you will not find a single version of the track. Everyone overlays their own version of the music track. Here is one of the popular YouTube trio on the topic of bebra.