A lot of time foreign publications mention corruption in Romanian as if it were a single entity, one kind of “breaking the rules” for private gain.

It’s understandable why some people would be confused. After all, the word “bribe” in English has nothing but negative connotations, utterly repellant to most people. Pay someone in the government to get something done? Unthinkably wrong.

Nonetheless, Romania spent many long years under Turkish rule, where a network of influence, relations and yes, sometimes even straight up bribes were necessary to get things done. Call it “greasing the skids” if you like. I prefer to refer to it by the old term “juice” (definition 7).

There are many Romanian terms for what goes on under the rubric of “corruption” (and I’ll cover them all here eventually) but perhaps the one most unambiguously equivalent to the English word “bribe” is the word șpaga (shpog-uh).

Just as in English, this refers to a bribe, whether cash money or else perhaps an extravagant gift, given to someone in power in order to advance one’s personal agenda. Șpaga is the word you want to use when condemning the practice, as all honest Romanians abhor it.

Apparently the word comes from the Russian шпага (pronounced virtually identical to the Romanian), meaning any short blade with a pointy tip, whether a skewer or a bayonet or perhaps even a short sword. I guess you could say that a hefty bribe is a kind of a weapon then, menacing a government official with a temptation too great to resist, and simultaneously injuring the trust and confidence of the public in its deputies.

AND NOW YOU KNOW!