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Random new word of the day


roddy

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  • 3 weeks later...

姹紫嫣红 'deep purples and bright reds'

Saw this in the last sentence in my current book. Two guys look out of the window and see the New Year's fireworks.

That looked familiar: my previous book also ended with two people looking out at the New Year's fireworks. And that phrase looked rather familiar too. I looked it up, and lo and behold, that 姹紫嫣红 was used in both scenes (in very different books by completely different authors, too). So apparently, it's a word especially suitable for describing fireworks at the end of a novel.

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斲琴

 

I watched a TV programme tonight and part of it was about making qin (琴) manually, a very demanding and time consuming skill/ trade.  And the word 斲琴 was used in the programme repeatedly.  The word means "to make/ carve qin".  The interesting things were - (1) 斲 is obviously not a common word in both Mandarin and Cantonese; (2) the word's pronunciations in Mandarin (zhuo2 qin2) and Cantonese (doek3 kam4) are completely different, with no similarity at all.

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What's the difference between 鬃 and 鬣 then? Is 鬣 only used in classical Chinese?

A quick image search shows that the first one seems to be more associated with cute animals, and the second one brings up a bunch of iguanas.

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More on 斲琴. This term is new to me, and it reminds me of 糴米. This latter term is not as rarely used as rice is after all a staple food. I learnt this term from my parents, so it was/is used by older generations. I think nowadays people would tend to simply say 造琴 and 買米 instead of using those specialised verbs. Using such terms help keep them alive.

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Just came across this term while reading some packages*. Don't remember actually "hearing" it before~~ I've always heard that later term. Simple & random enough however:

 

花生衣 = 花生皮

 

http://baike.baidu.com/view/103424.htm

 

I'm going to start chomping on the 花生衣 now for it's curative powers....

 

*technically packaging said  有衣花生... 

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A long long time ago, TVB showed a Japanese drama (dubbed in Cantonese) about woman swimmers. The title of the series was 綠水英雌. That was how I learnt the term 英雌. Back then there were also Japanese series called 排球女將, 網球雙鳳 etc. :D

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英雌 -  heroine

 

This one is new to me.

 

That's actually pretty great! :lol:

New words of the day for me:

  • 乌漆抹(mā)黑 - pitch black (well, it was [mā] where I first heard it, but it seems like there are variant pronunciations and ways of writing it)
  • 手撕鬼子 - satirical term for inaccuracy-ridden anti-Japanese wartime dramas
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贱人就是矫情...

 

Funny story how I learned this one... Went to lunch with some friends at a new place in Shenzhen and they handed out fortune cookies before the meal, we were all eager to open the fortune to say what was inside, and my fortune cookie fortune was "贱人就是矫情"... according to baidu:

http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=1XisSDa1DZ5M_ykGpeB0pniS62CoEOTzjdgpXv9KG4dPzcSwaGEbc6dsVdJTw0hwD5t2y6YwDCZOj5sHnuruI_

 

贱人就是矫情出自热播古装宫廷情感大戏《甄嬛传》。英文翻译:The bitch is pretentious!

网络用语:bitch is so bitchy(贱人就是矫情)
虽然网友们担忧中剧在外国的翻译,但影评人却表示这是多虑。周黎明直言,“那些很甄嬛的说法并非不能传神地翻译成英文。‘贱人太矫情!’一语靠软件可以翻成’The bitch is pretentious!‘其实,真要找对应的表达,我觉得可以很简单地说‘La-di-da(装模作样的人)!’可以重复一次:‘La-di-da!La-di-da!’《安妮·霍尔》经典台词。”[
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