Random new word of the day

[chrix]

Like 毛手毛腳, or different?

[Daan]

The context in which I saw it used is this sentence about a Taiwanese TV host:

那一天看了之後，不知道全國的女性同胞有何感想， 一些人趁著主持之便吃女來賓的豆腐，真是下流.

吃女來賓的豆腐 was glossed by the author of the paper as "teasing female guests", not inappropriately touching them. Could a native speaker please have a look? Baidu says 生活中比较典型而常见的，是个别男士爱跟女性调笑，甚至动手动脚占点便宜的，就被人斥之谓“吃豆腐”, so it apparently carries both meanings, but is inappropriately touching the more common one?

[chrix]

Let's discuss the "tease" issue here.

[chrix]

疲惫 píbèi "fatigued, weary".

What threw me off here was the second character, it's been simplified in a confusing way: 憊 became 惫. I kept parsing it wrong as 思 and couldn't find it in the dictionary, and it wasn't in my simplified/traditional characters anki deck but it isn't supposed to be as it is a component simplification in the first place, i.e. 備->备

[trien27]

厝:

cuò

1. verb [Literary] lay; place

2. verb [Literary] place a coffin in a temporary shelter pending burial

Source: http://www.nciku.com/search/zh/detail/%E5%8E%9D/6716

Found this while searching for 叶, which I once read wasn't "yè" and wasn't used as a simplification for 葉 before Mao took over China in 1949.

I found the reading of xie for 叶 at this site: 趣谈闽南话的“叶（xie）音”表达

I found this character 厝 from this site: 以閩南宗族姓氏命名的台灣行政地名

[renzhe]

Heard this one today, and it's too good not to share:

班长 = class representative (as in a school class)

副班长 = deputy class representative

In the context of a sports league, the 班长 is the team at the top of the table, and 副班长 is the team at the bottom of the table.

Brownie points for the first non-Chinese person who can explain why

[chrix]

I can but that would be cheating as I was sitting next to you

[jbradfor]

Only two teams?

Huh, you two are in the same class together?

[chrix]

where did he say this was in class

[renzhe]

I'm the class representative, chrix is the deputy.

It's a very big class

[imron]

Because in the army, the 班长 marches at the front and the 副班长 marches at the back.

My random word:

孑孓 - jiéjué - larva. The characters for this are great.

[renzhe]

Bingo!

But we've had 孑孓. Roddy loves writing that one over and over.

[imron]

Well, there you go. Perhaps I should be using an SRS after all

[Lu]

人體掃瞄儀 ren2ti3 sao3miao2yi2 body scanner, the scanner that looks under people's clothes to make sure they don't have a bomb in their underpants.

(Or they hope that's what you can see with those scanners. As far as I've followed the news, even the head of the airport doesn't know whether the underpants bomb would actually have been found with this machine. Doesn't stop the minister from installing them all over Schiphol, and worse, they keep the pictures for a certain period.)

Doesn't 厝 also mean house? I seem to recall it's the Taiwanese for home or house.

[skylee]

But we've had 孑孓. Roddy loves writing that one over and over.

then let's also learn 孑然 (solitary, lonely) and 孑然一身 (with no relatives, friendless)

[jbradfor]

麥霸 mài​bà​

MDBG defines this as "mic hog", as in someone that hogs the microphone during karaoke.

It must be a pretty common occurrence for there to be a word about it!

Anyone can comment on the use of the word and how common it is?

[chrix]

There's even a song with that title: http://www.56.com/u94/v_MTI4MDQwODM.html

(And 534K hits on google)

[jbradfor]

Is singing that song over and over too self-referential?

[Daan]

It's a pretty common word in Taiwanese KTV bars, as far as I've spent any time there.

[renzhe]

哈日族 - "Japanifed"

Refers to (mostly young) people with excessive interest in Japanese pop culture, including J-Pop, Manga, Anime, J-dorama, etc.

Apparently, the 哈 character stands for a Manchu word "hadaba" which stands for flattery.

Found it when checking out the background info on some characters in a recent TV show.