"green pasture" meaning pub in Russian

Hi everyone!

In Russian there is an expression "злачное место" (literal translation is "a verdant place" or "a cereal place"). In modern Russian it means a disreputable place where vice thrives. For example, you can call a pub or a brothel "злачное место". But the original meaning is the complete opposite of this. It comes from the Orthodox prayer for the dead, and means "heaven". The meaning had already shifted by the late 19th century (1).

I looked at this prayer in other languages in the hope of finding a similar shift. In English the phrase is rendered "a green pasture". I haven't found any ironic uses of this expression. The only thing I found is an anecdote from a Greek forum about a pun on "a place of refreshment", meaning both heaven and a place with drinks (2).

I suppose that opaque or ambiguous phrases like "злачное место" or "a place of refreshment" admit such reinterpretations more easily. The word "злачный" is archaic, and its root "злак" now means "cereal" rather than "grass", so people no longer see a pasture in it (3). "Green pasture" is transparent, so its meaning stays fixed.

Are there similar expressions in your language? I would be excited to hear about them.

Sources (sorry, most are in Russian):

1. Russian Wikipedia on "злачное место", with a Chekhov quote using "злачное место" to denote a pub: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Злачное\_место
2. a pun on "a place of refreshment": https://www.lexilogia.gr/threads/εν-τόπω-χλοερώ-εν-τόπω-αναψύξεως-in-a-place-of-green-pasture-in-a-place-of-refreshment.9461/
3. Wiktionary page about "злачный": https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/злачный

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