science

Preved

Preved is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Preved rather than just read about it. In short: Preved (Russian: Преве́д) is a term used in the Padonkaffsky jargon, a meme in the Russian-speaking Internet which developed out of a heavily circulated picture, and consists of choosing alternative spellings for words for comic effect. The picture, a modified version of John Lurie's watercolor Bear Surprise, whose popularity was stoked by emails and blogs, features a man and a woman having sex in the clearing of a…

Key takeaways

Preved belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Preved to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Preved from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Preved (Russian: Преве́д) is a term used in the Padonkaffsky jargon, a meme in the Russian-speaking Internet which developed out of a heavily circulated picture, and consists of choosing alternative spellings for words for comic effect. The picture, a modified version of John Lurie's watercolor Bear Surprise, whose popularity was stoked by emails and blogs, features a man and a woman having sex in the clearing of a forest, being surprised by a bear calling "Surprise!" with its paws raised. In later Russian adaptations, the bear shouts "Preved!" (a deliberate misspelling of privet, приве́т – "hi!"). In keeping with a popular trend of image manipulation, the iconic bear — dubbed Medved (Russian: Медвед), a misspelling of медведь ("bear") — has been inserted into many other pictures where his appearance adds a new dimension to the joke. The word and the bear image have found their way into the mainstream mass media, such as a poster for the Russian edition of Newsweek. Eventually, it has become known that the author of the altered picture with the word "preved" was user Lobzz from site Dirty.ru, real name Roman Yatsenko. The authorship of the word itself is still unclear, although the "unfinished" version, "prevet" was traced to 2003. Preved is identified by a specific pattern of alternative spelling which emerged from the word. In this pattern, voiceless consonants are replaced with their voiced counterparts, and unstressed vowels are interchanged pair-wise – a and o stand in for each other, as do e and i. The words уча́снег (uchasneg) (a misspelling of участник (uchastnik), "user" or "participant"), preved itself, and кагдила (kagdila) (a misspelling of как дела (kak dela), "how are you") illustrate this pattern. The larger trend of alternative spellings, called "olbansky yazyk" ("Olbanian language", misspelled "Albanian") developed from the padonki movement which originated on sites such as udaff.com. That trend uses the opposite conversion from the Preved trend – voiced consonants are replaced with their voiceless counterparts (which are sometimes doubled). For vowels, o is replaced with a and e with i. For example, áвтор (ávtor, "author") would be spelled áффтар (áfftar) or áфтар (áftar). The latter exhibits a sort of eye dialect. This meme has made its way to the American spotlight, as another reference of this popular term was used in a cartoon of Steve Jobs yelling this phrase in an image that was used in the mid to late 2000's as a custom recovery logo for devices such as the first-generation iPhone, the iPod Touch, and iPhone 3GS that was exclusive for the early jailbreak tools like PwnageTool. This image was spread all around social media in places like Reddit, and other small developer forums.

"Medved" in politics In Russian, MEDVED (Russian: МЕДВЕД) is an abbreviation of the name of the Interregional Unity Movement (Russian: Межрегиональное Движение Единство) - a pro-government movement that formed a faction in the 3rd State Duma (1999-2002), long before the appearance of the Internet meme. The movement's logo featured a brown bear. In 2002, the Interregional Unity Movement merged into the newly formed United Russia party. United Russia adopted the Unity bear logo, later changing its color from brown to white. This, along with the Internet meme, influenced the fact that the word "medved" is often associated with Dmitry Medvedev, President of Russia from 2008 to 2012. During an internet conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 6 July 2006, during which all interested Runet users asked him questions through a Yandex portal, the question "PREVED, Vladimir Vladimirovich! How do you feel about MEDVED?" received the largest number of votes (28,424). This event played a significant role in the "Preved-Medved" meme gaining fame and popularity even among those who rarely use the Internet. In the end, the question was not asked to Putin (the organizers considered this and some other questions to be a flash mob); the question "How do you feel about the Medved' magazine?" was asked instead. Some representatives of non-Russian press took the original "Medved" question literally; in particular, Associated Press reportedly interpreted it as a reference to then-deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Illustrations

Preved: Promotional poster for the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine features its chief editor Leonid Parfyonov crying "Preved" with the Preved bears flying on the background (c. 2007). — Promotional poster for the Russian edition of Newsweek magazine features its chief editor Leonid Parfyonov crying "Preved" with the Preved bears flying on the background (c. 2007).

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Preved

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Preved claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Preved before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Preved ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Preved

In research: Preved appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Preved in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Preved is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Internet memes, Nonstandard spelling, Russian Internet slang, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Preved outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Preved in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Preved means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Preved out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Preved in simple terms?

Why does Preved matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Preved?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Preved.