And We're Back

Ladies and gentlemen,

in honor of the idiom-stopping shenanigans of recent days, this one is going to be

зубодёр

zubodyor - lit. "tooth yanker" A dentist, usually an artless one.

Two things to remember about Soviet dentistry:  It existed in a primitive but pervasive way; Anesthesia pretty much didn't.  Serious root-work was out of the question, but they could cap, pull, and replace your teeth with steel ones.  The zubodyor was not your friend.  Or anyone else's.  At parties, he didn't tell people what he did for a living.

That's all in the past, though.  Nowadays, dental tourism is a pretty decent reason to visit Russia.  For some reason - perhaps the huge market of people who have never had the benefit of orthodontia - the zubodyori have really taken to modern methods and equipment and become a industry of dental surgeons notorious for their skill and relative detachment from first-world medical cost inflation.