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Could you please explain what this means, and why?

Руки не доходят посмотреть.

Glorfindel
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Dav
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    BTW, I'm interested in English equivalent of this idiom, if exists – Roman Petrenko Feb 04 '14 at 18:45
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    @RomanPetrenko: "Ain't nobody got time for that" I think would be the closest thing! – Quassnoi Feb 04 '14 at 19:21
  • And funny thing in this phrase is walking hands (why hands? i am walking by legs) which cannot reach some place to look (looking hands?) at something. – flicus Feb 05 '14 at 18:56
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    From the other answers, it sounds like an English equivalent might be, "I'd like to [do x], but I've only got two hands." – EtTuBrute Mar 10 '14 at 11:14
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    @Quassnoi it is not even close – hazzik Mar 26 '14 at 20:42
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    @RomanPetrenko: the closest idiomatic expression to this, given the context you described, is: "there (just) aren't enough hours in the day" – CocoPop Jun 10 '14 at 23:10
  • @Quassnoi: I agree with hazzik. That expression is used to make fun of one particular black woman who used it on tv, and if you were to use in the wrong company, it would probably be taken as a racial slur - especially coming from a non-native. I don't recommend it. – CocoPop Jun 11 '14 at 14:13
  • Ты когда смотришь что нибудь, ты же в руках прямо вертишь это. Вот что бы посмотреть, например журнал научный, или книжку, или ещё какую-то штуку. Надо взять её в руки, т.е. бросить все дела, и вертеть, листать смотреть. Смотреть конечно же ты будешь глазами, но руки - это важно. – anonymous Jun 22 '14 at 09:50

9 Answers9

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Generally,the Руки не доходят idiom means "Cannot find time to do [something]".

So, your phrase can be translated as "Cannot find time to view/read/watch [something (a movie, an article, a leak in the plumbing etc.)]"

By the way, the given phrase (with посмотреть) is an oxymoron often referenced as an example of collocation, which non Russian-speaking people find hard to understand.

Roman Petrenko
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As was written above, "руки не доходят посмотреть" means "Cannot find time to watch", but there is an accent like "Well, I want to watch it, but when I have the time, I have something with higher priority to watch, or something distracts me" not "I Can't find the time to watch anything, so I didn't watch this thing."

So in general it's used when you have time to watch movies and rest, and you want to watch this movie, but somehow you didn't yet.

And as to "walking hands," first of all "доходить" is the perfective form of "ходить," so it is closer to "get to." And "доходить" has a rather wide range of meanings: in different cases it can be translated as "to understand," "to be done," "to rise" (to an amount).

CocoPop
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Alissa
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Everyone here is making the translation too quirky and context specific. It translates to— "I (my hands) haven't gotten (around) to do(ing) it" доходить--to reach, get to X. We say exactly the same thing in English, minus the hands.

VCH250
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As @roman-petrenko said, Руки не доходят [сделать что-то] means "Cannot find time to [do something]".

Why "руки"? Generally you use hands to do something.

Why "дошли/доходят"? "There were too many things I had to do and I haven't got to some job."

Later the phrase generalized to the actions that don't involve hands (e.g. reading).

Ark-kun
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"Руки не доходят" is not walking by hands. For example. You have to do ten home-made pies. You can't do the sixth pie before the fifth pie. If you doing the fifth pie and somebody ask you about the sixth pie then your answer is "Руки не дошли". "не дошли" mean "not a turn".

Satabol
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Can't find time for it, but there is an english equivalent phrase:
"Can't get my hands on it".

igoryonya
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It's one of oxymoron phraselogism. Meaning is "No free time to do something"

Sugar
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Why hands?

The idea is: "I'm so overwhelmed with stuff to do, that I'm just grabbing next closest things and that particular thing lays too far from my hands (its turn still not come)".

Sergey Kirienko
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It means no possibility of doing something planned due to whatever reason.

farfareast
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user9133
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  • The answer is too short but I agree with the gist of it: why so many people srtess "no time". There is no direct reference to time in this idiom. You may have had plenty of time but were procrastinating and did not do the thing. – farfareast Jun 17 '17 at 03:32