What it means
خاموش و روشن (khâmush va rowshan) pairs two pure Persian adjectives: خاموش (khâmush), meaning dark, extinguished, or off, and روشن (rowshan), meaning lit, bright, or on. Together, as a verb phrase with کردن (kardan, to do), they describe the action of turning a device off and back on again, the universal first step in tech support. Colloquially the phrase compresses to خاموش روشنش کن (khâmush rowshanesh kon), understood immediately by any Persian speaker. There is no single-word equivalent that carries the same casual authority. The nearest formal alternative would be راهاندازی مجدد کردن (râh-andâzi mojadad kardan, to restart), but in everyday speech nobody says that to a family member struggling with their phone.
How to use it
- گوشیتو یه بار خاموش روشن کن ببین درست میشه. (gushit-o ye bâr khâmush rowshan kon bebin dorost mishe.) “Turn your phone off and on once and see if it fixes.”
- اینترنت قطعه؟ روتر رو خاموش روشن کن. (internet qate-e? rutar ro khâmush rowshan kon.) “Internet cut out? Turn the router off and on.”
- لپتاپم هنگ کرده، باید خاموش روشنش کنم. (laptopam hang karde, bâyad khâmush rowshanesh konam.) “My laptop froze, I have to restart it.”
- قبل از هر چیز خاموش و روشن کن، شاید خودش درست بشه. (qabl az har chiz khâmush va rowshan kon, shâyad khodesh dorost beshe.) “Before anything, turn it off and on, maybe it fixes itself.”
Cultural note
Iranians have a well-documented cultural reflex of trying خاموش روشن کردن before any other troubleshooting step, a habit so ingrained it has become a mild joke among Iranian tech workers. The phrase travels across generations: a grandparent and a software engineer will both reach for it instinctively. Because خاموش and روشن also carry poetic weight in classical Persian (light and darkness as metaphors for life, knowledge, and love), there is an unintentional poetry to pressing this mundane phrase into service for rebooting a Wi-Fi router. The colloquial contraction خاموش روشنش کن drops the و (va, and) entirely and is the form most commonly heard in Tehran households.