New-style "chengyu"

[Demonic_Duck]

These are basically phrases in modern Mandarin stripped of some of their characters in order to make them look like chengyu. Often, characters which convey a large part of the meaning of the original phrase are removed, adding to the humorous effect. Predominantly used online. If you know of any others, post them!

• 【十动然拒】：“十分感动，然后拒绝了他/她。” "Felt deeply moved, before rejecting him/her." The original story was that a guy wrote a book of over 160,000 characters to express his love for the girl of his dreams, but she still turned him down.
• 【不明觉厉】： “虽然不明白你在说什么，但是听起来感觉很厉害的样子。” I don't understand, but it sounds impressive!
• 【男默女泪】：“男生看了会沉默，女生看了会流泪。” "Causes men to fall silent and women to weep." Used for something very moving (or supposedly very moving), but generally with an ironic twist.
• 【累觉不爱】：“很累，感觉自己不会再爱了。” "So tired, I feel like I can never love again." Originally used by a young guy who had been unlucky in love, and so decided at the grand old age of not-yet-twenty that he could never love again.
• 【喜大普奔】：“喜闻乐见、大快人心、普天同庆、奔走相告。” "A delight to the eyes and ears, to the great satisfaction of all, everyone joining the celebration, running around to spread the good news." This one is great, because it's a mishmash of four already existing chengyu.
• 【细思恐极】：“仔细想想，觉得恐怖至极。” (“思” being a synonym for “想”, but with more literary feel to it.) "When you really think about it, it's goddamn terrifying!"
• 【人艰不拆】：“人生已经如此艰难，有些事情就不要拆穿了。” "Life's hard enough already, don't tear down the protective wall of lies that shields us from the truth!"
• 【说闹觉余】：“ 其他人有说有笑有打有闹感觉自己很多余。” "Everyone else is already having a riot, I don't feel like I'm needed here."
• 【啊痛悟蜡】：“啊，多么痛的领悟。” (“蜡” comes from the fact that people typically posted candle emojis after such a message). "Ouch, what a painful realisation! *candle*"
• 【然并卵】：“然而并没有什么卵用。” "However, in the end it was all f***ing useless."
• 【火钳刘明】 i.e. “火前留名”：“看好这作品会火的可能性，而在前排留名。” "As soon as I saw this post/article, I knew it was going to cause a commotion, so I'm going to leave a comment here."
• Similarly: 【山前刘明】 i.e. “删前留名”。 "As soon as I saw this post/article, I knew it was going to get deleted/censored..."

 

List adapted from http://www.cqsq.com/read/6100899. Apologies for the disgusting amount of adverts on said site.

[Kenny同志]

These words are extremely confusing. I know only one of them, i.e. 火前留名. 

[陳德聰]

Kenny you may have dated yourself there 累觉不爱 is one that the first time I saw it online I actually burst out laughing.

[Kenny同志]

Kenny you may have dated yourself there

 

 

Well maybe. I just can't stand such words. They make no sense and confuse people.

[陳德聰]

I think they would be considered "internet slang", would they not? I think creative use of language is always more interesting than simply replicating the same old words over and over. Someone had to make up the words you use today and it's likely someone sat in a field somewhere not being able to stand at least a few of them.

[Kenny同志]

I think creative use of language is always more interesting than simply replicating the same old words over and over. 

 

 

I agree but new words do not have to be made this way. We have hundreds of new words that go to dictionaries each year. The difference is that most of them follow rules of how Chinese words are usually made whereas the internet slang expressions Duck posted tend to be a random combination of four characters from a complete sentence.

 

That being said, it's 無傷大雅 for 插科打諢 purposes.

[Angelina]

Languages change all the time, not only when it comes to new vocabulary, it also means new word (or phrase) formation rules being used. This is interesting, very unique. However, we are not sure how widespread it is.

All change starts when someone breaks the rules and comes up with a new, both strange and hip, language. Some of the changes stay that way, some of them become accepted by a larger community.

It is good to know this exists. Not sure if we should use it because its use looks restricted, at least for now.

[Kenny同志]

They are mostly used in some internet forums to joke around. 

 

I am of the opinion that most of them won't have a long life span because they have a fatal problem, lack of logic. Take the first word 十動然拒 for example, I can't, even in my wildest dreams, expect 十 = 十分, 動 = 感動, and 然 = 然後. It also puzzles me why I should refuse someone's request if I was moved.

 

Edit:

 

Also by themselves, these slang words are not complete in senses they are intended to express. You have to mentally add what is missing there to understand them. This is also fatal.

[Angelina]

You never know.

[Kenny同志]

Well, let's see.

[Angelina]

We can bet

[imron]

It also puzzles me why I should refuse someone's request if I was moved.

And therein lies the humour

[Kenny同志]

We can bet 

賭什麼？

 

And therein lies the humour 

 

 

True. That's why I said it's for 插科打諢 purposes.

[Guest realmayo]

On a similiarish note, for 她很可爱 I came across 可爱 as being short for 可怜，没人爱 ... funny ....  but I don't know if this jokey usage is widespread or indeed if it's been around for ages.

[Kenny同志]

 I came across 可爱 as being short for 可怜，没人爱 ... funny .... 

 

 

麻油, that's a deliberate misinterpretation of the word. The usage is newish and strictly limited to teasing people.

[陳德聰]

And yet people who are in the know will understand exactly what's going on. Same with these. Despite literally only having seen 十动然拒 maybe once(?), after learning what each character stands for, I have not forgotten, despite the logic. There are many "illogical" things about Chinese that are also already so pervasive that I don't know that it is likely we will see the decline of these because of their internal logic. For example, you really dislike the idea of 我讨厌他 meaning "I dislike him" because of what 讨 means, and the usage goes against the supposed logic of the word... and yet it is so pervasive that it really is just natural speech now for most people. I don't expect to see it disappear anytime soon either.

[Kenny同志]

One thing is for sure: None of the 'new style chengyu's will be included in 現代漢語詞典 within 10 years.

 

I bet a copy of the dictionary plus postage on this.

[dwq]

I haven't heard of 十動然拒 either, but it seems logical to me; even though one can be moved by a single act (e.g. somebody spending their whole month's salary to buy flowers for you), they might still not accept someone for a long-term relationship (not being careful with one's income can be a negative).

Or perhaps the 十分感動 is meant as 反話 and the target is not really moved despite one's extensive effort.

[Demonic_Duck]

All of these are generally used for humorous effect and contain a good dose of irony. Kenny's right that they won't see the light of the 现代汉语词典 any time soon (probably never, but you never know).

 

I don't think lack of immediately evident logic is "fatal" to a word, phrase or chengyu. “塞翁失马” is still going strong, despite the fact that knowing the meanings of “塞”、“翁”、“失” and “马” won't make its meaning clear to you. You need to know the story for it to make sense. The same is true of “十动然拒”.

 

However, as with most 网络用语, all of these were created as throwaway memes, and I think their creators themselves would be as surprised as anyone if they were still being used in 50 years.

[Angelina]

塞翁失马 over 十动然拒 anytime. Memes are bad, I hate memes.