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A person left two words written in red color on my bedoom wall. I could read the second one as боягуз all right. but I could not parse the first (upper) one. maybe it is misspelled. suykyn? scykyn? I infer from the context that it may be derogatory, or is it an adjective, like a special kind of coward?

words on wall

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    Welcome to Ukrainian Language! Like other language sites on Stack Exchange, we do not translate texts or words, so this question may be closed as off-topic. The first word is, indeed, misspelled. It should be сцикун, a derogatory for "coward", literally "one who pisses". Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 13:47
  • I can read and understand written Ukrainian quite well, so I'm fine with an answer in Ukrainian, will try to find a better tag
    – dlatikay
    Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 13:48
  • Your thoughts about misspelled is right; correct word could be mentioned сцикун (synonym for боягуз) or next derogatory non-correct сукин (bitch's < originally female-dog) < (correct) сучин, which is often with another word, сучин or (adj) сучий [word]. Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 18:08

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Looks like misspelling of сцику́н (stsykun).

This derives from сця́ти (stsiaty) with meaning "to pee" and, figuratively, "to fear" ("to fear to the extent of losing control of own urine"). Hereof сцикло́, сцику́н and etc are figurative for "coward" (literally — "one who piss"). (When I started to write this answer, I assumed сцяти to be a modern word of Russian origin, but it appeared to be in fact from Proto-Slavic sьcati/sьkati.)

Not to be confused with сса́ти (ssaty) and сца́ти (stsaty) with meaning "to suck". As the verb to suck has negative meanings in English, you might wrongly assume it has similar ones in Ukrainian (and somehow build associative chains between milk sucking and fear) — but in fact historically the verb to suck in Ukrainian doesn't have such connotation as in English (though due to the growing influence of the latter it may get in future). We have a word ссаве́ць ("one who sucks"), which means just "mammal", a proverb ласкаве теля двох маток ссе (literally — "gentle calf sucks two mothers"; in English more often expressed as the humblest calf sucks the most milk), which uses to suck rather in positive meaning, and etc. So the offense word сцикун is from "to pee", not from "to suck".

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  • -1: a substantial part of this post has nothing to do with the original question and only confuses a reader. Commented Jun 16, 2019 at 15:39
  • @bytebuster we just need to edit the answer with an additional note like "extra info:" no need to put too many minuses here.
    – P. Vowk
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 11:21
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    учнем української мови, я ціную додаткову інформацію. так і можуть інши люди.
    – dlatikay
    Commented Jun 17, 2019 at 17:32

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