The slang word freebie, which has entered the Russian colloquial language, does not have an equivalent noun meaning and is interpreted in dictionaries as "something that is received for free, without investment, costs, or at someone else's expense."

The derivative of this word freeloader is used as an insult when describing a person who is "inclined to receive something for free or at someone else's expense, for free", as well as "an unscrupulous, inept employee". Its equivalents can be the nouns slacker, freeloader.

This word has gained particular popularity due to the success of a television advertisement with its hero Lenya Golubkov, in which Lenya's brother insultingly calls him a freeloader, to which he receives an answer: "I'm not a freeloader, I'm a companion."

The words freebie and freeloader in a negative sense began to be used during the Stalin camps. The word freebie itself is not a neologism. It is recorded in the dictionary of V. I. Dahl, who interprets it as "boot boot, wide and short machine sleeve". In addition, this word refers to the terminological vocabulary of the glassblowing industry. It means a blown large glass bubble of an elongated shape, i.e. the shape of a boot, sleeve. Such a bubble was called a freebie. Only a physically strong, experienced glassblower or freeloader could blow out a freebie. In the glassblowing industry, such masters were highly valued. Consequently, initially neither the freebie nor the freeloader had anything to do with light work. Only in Gulag workshops, where prisoners were not interested in labor, where "immortal Gulag inventions - "bullshit", i.e. the production of air and "freebie", i.e. getting money for air " (Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language of the late XX century) became a way of deception and survival.

If initially the main meaning of the freebie was its elongated shape, then later the main seme of the produced object became the content, i.e. air and its figurative meaning "emptiness", "nothing". Thus, the product of the glassblower's hard work (freebie) turned into its opposite - "fill with air", i.e. get something just like that, without difficulty: for free.

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