Word.ws English Dictionary

Russian reversal

Russian reversal noun: a type of joke that reverses the subject and object of an ordinary statement, claiming to describe the situation in Soviet Russia.

Noun

Russian reversal (plural Russian reversals)

  1. A type of joke that reverses the subject and object of an ordinary statement, claiming to describe the situation in Soviet Russia.
    • Sounds like a Russian Reversal. "In Soviet Japan, life lives YOU!"2015, TJ Edmister, “Re: Interesting phraseology”, in sci.lang.japan (Usenet)
    • Decades ago comics like Yakov Smirnoff used to do “Russian Reversal” jokes: “In America you can always find a party! In Soviet Russia, party always finds you.”2015, Danny Katch, Socialism . . . Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation, page 35

Forms of Russian reversal

pluralRussian reversals

Questions about Russian reversal

What does Russian reversal mean?
Russian reversal means a type of joke that reverses the subject and object of an ordinary statement, claiming to describe the situation in Soviet Russia.
What part of speech is Russian reversal?
Russian reversal is a noun.
What is the plural of Russian reversal?
The plural of Russian reversal is Russian reversals.

Words near Russian reversal in the dictionary

  1. Russian ovens
  2. Russian peasant multiplication
  3. Russian plum
  4. Russian plums
  5. Russian pyramid
  6. Russian reversal
  7. Russian reversals
  8. Russian Revolution
  9. Russian River
  10. Russian roulette
  11. Russian sable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Russian reversal (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Russian reversal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/russian_reversal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.