Lousy, infested with lice; wretched, pathetic, trashy, cheap, miserable. Derived from the standard Russian noun вошь (louse). In literal terms, it means infested with parasites. In everyday slang, colloquial speech, and common insults, it is heavily used as an expressive adjective to describe something of extremely low quality, a miserable or pathetic person, or a wretched situation (мне дали какую-то вшивую премию — “they gave me some pathetic, measly bonus”). It is also famous in the psychological proverb вшивый о бане, а голодный о хлебе (“the lousy person talks about the bathhouse, the hungry about bread”), meaning people always talk about what they lack.
Два часа! Каких-то вшивых два часа осталось до боя курантов, чёрт бы их побрал совсем.
Two hours! There’s just two lousy hours until new year, the devil with them.
(Сергей Михайлов, Тумак Фортуны или Услуга за услугу)
