Random new word of the day

[EnergyReaper]

some days ago, a friend ask me what does "吃鸡" mean? She is an ethnic Chinese living in Canada, so I'm a little confusing, and then I search this word in baidu. In the end I got it. According to baidu, the newer meaning of "吃鸡" today is a game developed by a Korean Company. Gosh, so many new words from Internet today.

[Publius]

17 minutes ago, EnergyReaper said:

According to baidu, the newer meaning of "吃鸡" today is a game developed by a Korean Company.

Yes, it's a direct translation of the English phrase 'Winner Winner Chicken Dinner' (大吉大利晚上吃雞) which appears when you win the battle royale type FPS game H1Z1 and its successor PUBG.

[Geiko]

Do ligatures count as a word? 

I have been obsessed for a very long time with a t-shirt Rachel Green wore in Friends 5.21, which had some kind of Chinese character on it. However, Pleco didn't shed any light, and searching in google wasn't useful either. But today somebody posted on Instagram three ligatures, and one of them happened to be the one on Rachel's t-shirt! It was like an epiphany to me! 

 

P. S. : Learning something related to Chinese is never a waste of time 

 

 

 

[Wippen (inactive)]

手捧水晶球   staring/gazing into a crystal ball. I guess the Chinese then say "hold". I did not know the same expression existed.

[Wippen (inactive)]

翻白眼   =

(where is the emoticon for eyeroll) :-)

[Geiko]

[Geiko]

断袖之癖 Trad. 斷袖之癖

duàn xiù zhī pǐ

lit. cut sleeve (idiom); fig. euphemism for homosexuality, originating from History of Western Han 漢書|汉书: emperor Han Aidi (real name Liu Xin) was in bed with his lover Dong Xian, and had to attend a court audience that morning. Not wishing to awaken Dong Xian, who was sleeping with his head resting on the emperor's long robe sleeve, Aidi used a knife to cut off the lower half of his sleeve.

 

(Source)

 

 

[anonymoose]

公交车

the village bicycle

[Lu]

On 17/03/2018 at 11:07 PM, Geiko said:

斷袖

I find it lovely that Chinese has a word for homosexuality that has such a romantic backstory.

 

My word: 克罗地亚 Kèluódìyà. I knew it must be a country, said it out loud in my head a few times and still couldn't figure it out (Claudia??). It's Croatia.

[Lu]

选民 xuǎnmín not only means 'electorate' or 'the people who voted for you', but also 'the chosen people'. I encountered this in a Christian text and it made so much more sense once I'd found the other meaning.

[Tomsima]

致命傷 came across this in a book yesterday, it was used almost exactly like an english speaker would use 'Achilles heel'. Its primary meaning 'mortal wound' may in fact be more common, but I've yet to bump into it in my literary travels so far. 

[murrayjames]

Lu,

 

The term can confuse people in English too! Here is one commonly-cited example from the King James Bible (2 Peter 1:10):
 

Quote

Give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall.

 

[Lu]

礼炮 lǐpào gun salute (for example, when a prince is born)

[Tomsima]

離合 clutch (in a car)

 

I got laughed at just now for saying 踩換檔位的 for the English meaning of 'change gear', the proper way to say this being 踩離合 'use (step on) the clutch' (separator-connecter!)

[sekkar]

享樂主義 hedonism, I love how a lot of the "difficult" words in English are so self-explanatory when written in Chinese.

[imron]

To be fair, for such "difficult" words in English, the Greek/Latin roots are almost identical in meaning to the Chinese and similarly self-explanatory.

[Lu]

航天 hángtiān space travel

and

航宇 hángyǔ space travel

Apparently (according to Wikipedia, at least), 航天 is space exploration within the solar system, and 航宇 for exploration even further out.

 

And I came across this while researching porcelain and ceramics vocabulary. Go figure.

[renzhe]

On 3/20/2018 at 4:54 PM, Lu said:

 

My word: 克罗地亚 Kèluódìyà. I knew it must be a country, said it out loud in my head a few times and still couldn't figure it out (Claudia??). It's Croatia.

 

Obviously one of the first words I learned.

 

Interestingly, the Taiwanese call it 克羅埃西亞. They seem to have borrowed the transliteration from English, whereas the mainland transliteration comes from (presumably) the original Latin.

[Beelzebro]

Some recent acquisitions for me:

 

掰弯 to turn sb gay  

帐篷 tent  

压迫 to oppress / oppression  

死火山 extinct volcano  

拖后腿 to hold somebody back / be a drag on sb

[889]

肥宅

As in 肥宅快乐水.

 

http://www1.hkej.com//dailynews/article/id/1853984/%E8%82%A5%E5%AE%85%E5%BF%AB%E6%A8%82%E6%B0%B4

 

http://www.ejinsight.com/20180531-why-the-feizhai-phenomenon-is-bad-news-for-china/

 

http://yes-news.com/yespick/276885/%E8%82%A5%E5%AE%85%E7%89%B9%E5%BE%B5%E4%BD%A0%E4%B8%AD%E4%BA%86%E5%B9%BE%E9%A0%85%E5%91%A2%E5%BF%AB%E6%89%BF%E8%AA%8D%E5%90%A7