короче (koroche)

What it means

1. 1.

   Anyway; long story short. Announces that the speaker is about to get to the point, and is then very often followed by several more minutes of preamble.

2. 2.

   The single most characteristic filler in spoken Russian. Learners who add one короче per story immediately sound less like a textbook.

Literally: shorter

Examples with translations

• Короче, мы туда даже не доехали.

  Anyway, we never even got there.

• Ну короче, я согласился.

  So basically, I said yes.

Where it comes from

The comparative of короткий 'short', from короче говоря 'to put it more briefly'. The full phrase is now the marked, bookish version; the single word has taken over completely.

Other forms

Romanised as:

koroche