What does “дурить голову” mean in Russian?
Конфликт между владельцами кофеен
B1 Russian listening practice · Standard Russian · Curated for intermediate learners
Дурить голову means to mess someone around or mess with their head: to confuse or mislead them, give them the runaround, or waste their time. Literally it’s “to fool the head,” and the person being fooled goes in the dative, so не дури мне голову is “stop messing me around.” It’s colloquial and a little rough, the kind of thing you snap in an argument rather than say politely.
In the clip a customer complains that the coffee shop across the street charges 80 roubles, not 90, and the barista snaps back: Так иди в кофейню через дорогу. Что ты голову дуришь? Here что is literally “what,” but in this kind of conversational question English naturally uses “why”: Что ты кричишь? = “Why are you shouting?” So the line is “Then go there. Why are you messing me around?” The punchline follows: the complainer owns that shop across the street, out scouting the competition. A close cousin is морочить голову, with almost the same meaning. For a more slangy version, Russian also has пудрить мозги, literally “to powder someone’s brains.”
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.