The popular (and false) claim: the sentimental feeling a person has for someone they once loved but no longer do..
The popular (and false) claim: the sentimental feeling a person has for someone they once loved but no longer do.
Even as claimed, it would differ from nostalgia (longing for the past generally) and longing (yearning for what one still wants) by naming a faded, residual affection for someone no longer loved. But the distinction is moot — the word is not genuinely Russian. The real Russian item it seems to garble is the verb разлюбить (razlyubit') “to fall out of love.”
None valid. The prefix raz- (“dis-, un-”) is real, but the remainder does not parse as a Russian word.
No legitimate Russian etymology. Likely a garbling of разлюбить (razlyubit') “to stop loving.” The English print trail runs J. Bryan III, Hodgepodge (1986, as “razliubito”) → Howard Rheingold (1988, “razbliuto”) → Christopher Moore → William Safire (NYT, 2005).
It has no history as a Russian word; its entire “history” is as an English-language linguistic urban legend about a supposed Russian word, spread through novelty “untranslatable words” books from the mid-1980s on (with a possible 1960s Man from U.N.C.L.E. TV-script origin).
SPURIOUS — NOT a genuine Russian word. Native speakers do not recognize it, it is absent from Russian dictionaries, and it has no valid morphology. Definitively debunked by the linguist-blogger Languagehat (2005). Included here only as a cautionary example of a fabricated “untranslatable.” (Note: a sometimes-claimed link to J. M. Coetzee is unsupported.)