Slang terms from character components

[roddy]

I just came across the term 丘八 while reading. Context made clear it was soldiers of some sort, but I looked it up anyway. Turns out it's a derogatory term used for soldiers in general, but what I hadn't noticed is that it's made up from the components of the character 兵 - 丘 and 八. There's a bit of an explanation here.

I've never seen anything like that before, where a character is broken up into its components and then used as a (give or take) synonym. Does anyone know any others? It's described as 旧时, was this more common at any particular time?

[gougou]

A lot of that going on online, now, such as 强 being written 弓虽, but that's probably not quite what you're looking for?

[roddy]

Hmm, same kind of thing I suppose, hadn't thought of that. I was thinking of pre-Internet examples though.

[imron]

Ha! Let me guess, you're reading 家? This, plus your comment the other day about 底 is a dead giveaway :-)

[roddy]

Busted. Now I'm going to have to post more questions so it looks like I haven't given up.

[imron]

Haha, I remember coming across both of these things when I was reading 家. I only got about a third of the way through though, so you'll be able to stop with the questions soon

[roddy]

I'll wait a few days and then post "While reading the very last page of the incredibly difficult and complex novel 家, which I have recently and easily been enjoying, I came across a term i did not recognize, and therefore assume is highly obscure and . . . " Should fool you all.

Anyway, any more suggestions?

[zhwj]

茶寿 = 108 years old, from 廿 + 八十八, so that's kind of the reverse.

[rob07]

I posted 丘八 to the Random Word of the Day thread about a year ago because - yes - I'd seen it in 家.

was this more common at any particular time?

The time this word is most commonly encountered is when you are reading 家.

I have a feeling I've seen a couple of other words like this, but the only thing that comes to mind right now is this story from a Danwei article (zhwj, this is you right? great work with the site):

The Mirror talked to a man named Xin Ge (辛哿) ... Xin's grandmother said, "Choosing the name, I carried a Great Dictionary of Chinese Characters around all day, flipping and flipping through it. After repeated comparisons, I decided this character was the most satisfactory. The dictionary had two definitions for this character, "satisfactory" (可) and "fine" (嘉). And the makeup of the character - the top is 加 and the bottom is 可 - is quite interesting, so the kid's nickname was Kejia - in one stroke we had a name and a nickname."

[roddy]

So you did. Guess I haven't been reading my random words religiously enough, didn't remember seeing it there.

[randall_flagg]

Just posted one of those broken-character things in a different thread ("riddles" was the name of the thread, I think)

Question: One character for the Taiwanese National Holiday.

Answer: 朝

Expl: 十月十日

I just love those!

[semantic nuance]

When I was in my teens, we used 貝戈戈 to mean 賤 in Taiwan. I have no idea if the young are still using this term or not, but it was popular at that time.

[roddy]

Here's another one - 米田共, from the traditional 糞. As mentioned. (edit: fixed typo)

[trien27]

Here's another one - 米天共, from the traditional 糞. As mentioned.

Actually, they're not slang.

Well, in Chinese, usually to get away with the bad meanings of words, we use "euphemisms" by breaking up the whole characters into its parts: 糞 = 米田共, not 米天共. Another one is my friend's last name 謝 [He's from Hong Kong, and has since returned to Hong Kong so I used the Traditional version]. Because usually when this word is said, people will picture wilted flowers, due to one of its meanings being "to wilt, wilted, wilting, etc...", so some people break it up: 言身寸. It's actually broken up as 言 and 射 if you were to break it up according to radical & phonetic. The other meaning is "thanks/thank you".

[roddy]

Slang, euphemism, near enough . . .

[trien27]

I once read a Chinese book where they said there's a lot of examples of these "character break ups". Usually, I'd see them when said by poets, such as "草木之中有個人" by Su Dongpo as part of riddles. The answer is to put the grass radical and the wood character with a person between them: 草+人+木 = 艹+人+木 = 茶[answer]