Random new word of the day

[roddy]

Does it go under anything? Then it's a tunnel

A wildlife corridor would most likely be open, uncovered - say a strip of land left undeveloped through a housing estate so animals can move between forests on either side. A wildlife tunnel will go under something, most likely a road. Obviously you'd perhaps have wildlife tunnels as part of a wildlife corridor. 廊道 I would guess would be a corridor, as I'd expect tunnel to be 隧道, but if context made it clear it was going under a motorway I'd have taken the liberty.

Incidentally, I learned while researching this important question last night that wildlife bridges are now preferred, as they tend not to flood with oil and petrol polluted water like the tunnels do.

[Lu]

That makes sense, thanks. Let's hope what they're planning for the Suhua Freeway are wildlife corridors rather than tunnels then.

[roddy]

邮丢, yóudiū - to lose / be lost in the post. Just happened to come across it in a forum posting and went looking to see if it was actually a word or not. Examples:

电脑被邮丢电脑公司赔钱

挂号包裹里邮丢了东西怎么办?

I like that one.

[sishengqikuo]

邮丢is not a word....

it's more like a verb and obejct complement

电脑被邮丢了means"the computer was lost when it's being posted"

[Lu]

疫苗 yi2miao2 vaccine. From a story about a Taiwanese student taking part in a trial for an AIDS vaccine. Story had some other interesting things as well, like that all the participants had to have a 單純 sex life. Wasn't sure what exactly they meant by that (virgin? monogamous?).

[Lu]

蚊子館 wen2zi3guan3, 'mosquito hall', big expensive building that after being built turns out not to serve any need and is thus standing empty, only occupied by mosquitos. Can also be used for things that are not in fact halls, like superfluous bridges. Saw this word today for the first time, and liked it right away.

[roddy]

超临界, chāolínjiè, supercritical, as in Supercritical coal fired plants. This appears to be different from critical in the context of nuclear reactions in ways that I don't understand, but both use 临界.

邮丢is not a word....

Word-like enough for me . . .

[roddy]

发泡剂, fāpàojì, aerosol propellant (I think. If I'm wrong, would be handy to know by 9am Monday, London time.)

Edit: scratch that. Foaming agent?

[roddy]

硬菜, yìngcài, expensive, rarely eaten dishes served to guests. more.

[Lu]

家戶訪查 jia1hu4 fang3cha2 As you would guess, it meant house search.

Edit: correction, I am to translate it as "home visit", quotation marks included. Apparently it's the police coming to your home for whatever purpose (from telling you about a dangerous person in the neighbourhood to searching your house), and some people are very much against it, as the police has no business coming to people's homes when the people living in that home have done nothing wrong.

[Lu]

臘腸狗 la4chang2gou3 dachshund/teckel and other dogs with a long body and short legs. From an opinion piece in a newspaper. They actually call it a sausage dog!

[roddy]

射钉枪 shèdīngqiāng, nail-gun. There were a few words I heard today and thought 'oh, must remember that for the random word of the day thread. I forget them all though.

[Lu]

張飛打岳飛 Zhang1 Fei1 da3 Yue4 Fei1 well they lived in different eras, so it's impossible for them to fight with each other. Expression for things that just cannot be combined and the idea of trying to combine them is ridiculous.

[rob07]

saw Roddy's 次级房贷 and made me think of 茅盾's 子夜, a book which is in large part about some other pretty dodgy debt - 国民党/Kuomintang debt. I read the abridged version some time ago when I was just starting to look for real stuff to read, and even abridged it is great. The main characters are Shanghai entrepreneurs in the 1930s who take short and long positions on 国民党/Kuomintang debt based on advance rumours of army movements. Just goes to show that credit markets today really aren't exciting enough.

Anyway, my words from that book are are 多头, duo1tou2, take a long position (ie: buy the bonds) and 空头, kong1tou2, sell short. They are in my dictionary, but there may be more modern words now for 多头, while these days the concept described by 空头 has probably disappeared from the Chinese language altogether.

Another word I really like is 无形 wu2xing2 - nothing shaped, or invisible.

[roddy]

See if we can get this running again after a brief hiatus . . .

不倒翁 bùdǎowēng, one of those roly-poly dolls with the round base that swings back upright after you punch it, or someone who always bounces back after a defeat. From this article.

[imron]

拉皮 lāpí - facelift, picked while watching 金婚.

[Lu]

跳繩 tiao4sheng3 skipping rope (or was it jumping rope). The lady in the shop immediately knew what I meant when I demonstrated it :-)

[heifeng]

fun, jump rope knowlege, I recently was talking to someone about this, so, here's a question, how do you say double dutch, or would that just be 花样跳绳 wait, ok, I found something here : 花样分为倒跳、正编麻花、倒编麻花三种...but I think we need someone to tell me what they mean...as a side note, we need a corresponding song to go with all this rope jumping knowlege in (Chinese of course)...

well then we should know 跳皮劲 which is 'Chinese Style' jump roping

----

more animal planet stuff:

蹼脚pu3jiao3: webbed feet

_____

I have a pile of newspapers I better start selecting my random new words from...they are highlighted but just not up here yet hehe

[rob07]

昶, chang3, long day.

[roddy]

河蟹 héxiè, river crab - but I came across it in the context of 被河蟹, which seems to be 'be blocked, closed down' - eg:

今天死活打不开AT论坛，是不是被河蟹了？有哪位知道不？谢谢。

www.blogger.com 终于也被河蟹了

and also here which has a nice little story about Internet censorship in China, with a happy(ish) ending.

Would be interested to hear if anyone knows the origin of the usage.

Wait, seems to be a typo / variant of 被和谐? ie. Oh well.