Loony bin, psychiatric hospital (“yellow house”). In the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Russian Empire, psychiatric hospitals and insane asylums (most famously the Obukhov Hospital in Saint Petersburg) were traditionally painted a distinct imperial yellow. In modern Russian everyday speech, psychological venting, and literature, it remains a popular euphemistic or mocking term for a psychiatric institution or a state of complete mental chaos.
Почему вы не хотите желтый домик?
Why don’t you want to be in the loony bin?
(Бууу!!! @ mail.ru, 05/2011)
