A. P. Chekhov description of people are always concise and precise

As a doctor, and one of the greatest Russian writers of short stories, A. P. Chekhov description of people are always concise and precise. We will see some of them today and discover the vocabulary needed to describe a person.

“Это был человек среднего роста, с пухлым лицом и маленькими глазами, бритый, и казалось, что усы у него были не бриты, а выщипаны.”

(He was a man of middle height, with a chubby face and small eyes, clean shaven, and it seemed that his mustache had not been shaved but plucked.)

This is how Chekov draws the portrait of cook Nikonor in his novel О Любви (About Love).

In this description, you see that the man was средняя роста (middle height), but a person can also be высокая роста (tall) or низкая роста (short).

To give a better description, you can also say of a person that he or she is толстый/толстая (fat, stout), тонкий/тонкая (slim, thin) and even худой/худая (skinny).

This person could also have толстые ноги/руки (fat legs/arms), тонкие черты лица (delicate features), or be “худой как спичка” (thin as a match).

Nikonor has пухлое лицо (a chubby face), but some people have треуголное лицо (triangular face), плоское лицо (flat face), круглое лицо (round face).

Глаза человека – зеркало его души (the eyes of a person is the mirror of his soul). Their form and their colour can tell us a lot about the character of a person. People глаза (eyes) can be маленькие (small) or большие (big), круглые (round), миндальные (almond eyes). They can be голубые (blue), карие (hazel), зелёные (green).

Стили усов и бород (the style of the moustaches and beards) can be very different; they can be толстые (thick) or густые (thick, dense), узкие (thin), широкие (large), длинные (long), короткие (short), unless you prefer бриты (to be shaved).