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Ни хрена подобного.

Usually, the genitive "хрена" is pronounced as "хре́на", correct? I wonder why in this specific instance, the accent has to be moved to the last letter: "хрена́", thereby altering the pronunciation of the word completely.

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  • the genitive "хрена" is pronounced as "хре́на" - it's correct. In many cases with swear words it's just necessary to know the exact meaning and stress. With this word it's probably possible to see a pattern. To make a learner's life more difficult there are other words with different meanings that can be made using the same root хрен where stress is different. Sometimes words that sound similar may have the opposite meanings.
    – alexsms
    Feb 12, 2018 at 7:21

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It tries to fit the stress pattern of ничего. The same happens with ни черта́ despite чёрт not normally having a mobile stress paradigm.

Also note that expressions like ни хрена, до хрена and their variations with other nouns, including the obscene one, have become adverbialised to the extent that it's more common to spell them нихрена and дохрена. There's also the salient case of нахрена́ ("why the hell..."), which, on top of the odd stress placement, is not ever properly inflected: this strongly suggests that analogy-based formation patterns have taken over from inflection-based ones.

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The phrase "ни хрена подобного" is a fairly swear one. It implies that it is commonly used among poorly educated people who are more likely to live in rural areas of Russia.

As Nikolay Ershov mentioned earlier, such phrases as "ни черта подобного", "ни хрена подобного" (and many others) do not basically belong to the literary Russian language. I didn't manage to find any source that explains the stress in those phrases but the theory about the stress on the last syllable by analogy with "ничего" seems to be more than viable.

P.S. I would advise you to avoid these phrases in your speech as the most of them vulgar, old-fashioned and do not fit in any conversation. Phrase "ничего подобного" works well and does not have aforementioned disadvantages.

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    Perhaps it's how you'd like it to be, but the reality is, everybody and their dog says things like "ни хрена подобного", educated or not, rural or urban. It's called the "literary" language precisely because it's not the one actual people speak. Prescriptivism is what's "old-fashioned".
    – Nikolay Ershov
    Feb 10, 2018 at 14:56
  • I advised alone Zee to avoid this lexicon because it's about cultural norms. Suppose that you you're walking down the street and someone is swearing as If he was keelhauled. What are chances that you'd disrespect this person for such a barely tolerated behavior?.. What about average person?.. People's superstitions last for centuries, and from my living experience I can conclude that they are wide-spread and aren't going to disappear in the nearest future.
    – Dmitrii Demenev
    Feb 10, 2018 at 21:45
  • I'm intentionally exaggerating, but the message I'm trying to deliver is hopefully clear.
    – Dmitrii Demenev
    Feb 10, 2018 at 21:47

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