What does “дурить голову” mean in Russian?

Конфликт между владельцами кофеен

WhatsAppGmailTelegramEmail

B1 Russian listening practice · Standard Russian · Picked for people who know some

💡 Did you know?
дурить голову (durit' golovu)
Russian body-part idiom
“to mess someone around, mess with someone’s head”; to confuse or mislead them

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.”

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this B1 Russian listening practice video?

94.4%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Russian words
Most of the words in this video are common Russian words.

How common in Russian

86.1%
Top 1,000
94.4%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken Russian

97.1%
Top 1,000
97.1%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Harder words in this video

These words are harder than B1. Here is what they mean.

возмутительно
1×
Not in top 5,000
outrageously
дуришь
1×
Not in top 5,000
кофейне
1×
Not in top 5,000
кофейни
1×
Not in top 5,000
кофейню
1×
Not in top 5,000
голову дуришь
1×
to confuse or mislead someone

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.

See Standard Russian Videos You Can Understand on Reelang

See Russian videos