haltura
n.— «This last depicts a theater troupe’s desperate attempts to take a draft of a new play and, with only 20 minutes preparation, present it to the government censor for approval. As it happens, this drama about a revolution on a tropical island is perfectly awful, phoney art of the kind called haltura in Russian.» —“The Devil Comes to Moscow” by Mikhail Bulgakov Washington Post Nov. 17, 1991. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
When a teenager went a week without talking as part of a school project, he noticed a surprising side effect: Instead of rehearsing a response to what other people were saying to him, he was focused on listening — and feeling smarter as a result...
If you take up texting and social media late in life, there’s a lot to learn! A twenty-something wants advice getting her dad up to speed on memes, Instagram, and animated images. Plus, when you’re on a long road trip, what do you call...