Philologist explained where the word “might” came from and why it got infected

The word “to be able”, which means “to outshine someone”, went viral – in November, the service “Vordstat” recorded a sharp increase in requests to Yandex. About where the word came from, what it means and why it spread so quickly, told “MK in Tula” doctor of philological Sciences, Professor of RSUPU named after A. I. Herzen Natalia Kozlovskaya.

The verb came from English slang: to mog means “to look better than someone, to be more successful, to excel at something”. In Russian, the word got through TikTok, and the first mention in the media refers to 2025 - then it was about the company Sega, which "mighty" competitors.

According to the philologist, “to be able” is a borrowing that was adapted to Russian grammar with the help of suffixes and endings. Because of this, the word turned out to be convenient and short, and after the release of the track “I Can You”, it went viral and became a meme.

The fate of the word is difficult to predict, Kozlovskaya notes: he has literary analogues - "to surpass", "to win", "to eclipse".

“Whether this verb becomes the word of the year depends on many factors. So far, it looks more like a unit of speech with a brief history. But I can't predict. The word is capacious, convenient, short – so it may well “get used to”, but it will not go beyond the jargon, the expert believes.

Earlier, MK in Tula reported that in the Tula region from March 2026 there is a requirement to place information in trade and services in Russian. Rospotrebnadzor conducted 72 inspections, announced 72 warnings because of signs in a foreign language and sent 15 lawsuits to the courts - four have already been satisfied.