ABSTRACT This paper examines the transformational features and usage of “winged phrases” – in this case quotations from Soviet films that have become catchphrases in spoken and written Russian – in the headings of articles from three Russian newspapers. Data were selected between 2017 and 2018 from Komsomol′skaia pravda (Moscow edition), Izvestiia, and Literaturnaia gazeta. First, the authors identify the transformational features of these phrases; second, they analyze the nature of their usage, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The study reveals two new types of transformations (grammatically associative and lexical) that have not been identified in previous literature. It also demonstrates how the prism of dialogism affords new insights into the socio-historical and multi-voiced richness of winged phrases, extending our understanding of the complex plasticity of the structural and heteroglossic features of these phrases over time.