賊 zéi translates to thief, but in context it might take on different meanings, including traitor, rapist and, interestingly, squid! In general though, if you're called something with 賊 in it, chances are it's something nasty.
烏賊 wūzéi - cuttlefish. The cuttlefish is a type of squid that can change the color of its skin like a chameleon. In Taiwanese politics, 烏賊 is used to refer to opportunists who change their political colors whenever convenience demands it.
小毛賊 xiǎomáozéi - petty thief. 毛 is a character with many different meanings, one could imagine that the 毛 here referred to the money unit, but seeing as 毛 can also mean small or insignificant, a more likely explanation is that 小毛 together mean petty.
賣國賊 màiguózéi - traitor. Relatively straightforward. A word you will hear in Taiwan a lot these days, usually in sentences like 馬英九，這個賣國賊，暗渡陳倉地把臺灣賣給共匪！That traitor Ma Ying-jeou, he is secretly giving up Taiwan to the communist bandits!
采花賊 cǎihuāzéi - rapist. Sometimes I just don't know what to make of Chinese words. The verb-object structure 采花 means to pluck flowers, but also to forcibly enter a house and commit rape. A reasonable explanation would be that flowers here are used as a euphemism for female sexuality or lecherousness, other words like 花花公子 playboy, or 百合花 pure maiden would seem to support this.
誤上賊船 wùshàngzéichuán - to board a pirate ship by mistake. Not as stupid as it might sound from my English translation, this idiom is really just a fancy way to say 上當. When you 誤誤上一個人的賊船, e.g. board somebody's pirate ship by mistake, you are unknowingly heading into a situation where you're going to be swindled or cheated.
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First I though zéi wasn't a Chinese sound, that you maybe got it from Taiwanese or something, but then I looked it up, and the character above is actually the only character for the sound zei in Mandarin, and it only occurs in the second tone. No wonder I've never seen that sound before!
ReplyDeleteThere are actually four instances in Chinese of initial-final combinations that only have one tone and one character associated with them. The last three are:
ReplyDelete誰 shéi
給 gěi
倆 liǎ
Ah, reminds me of 嫩 nèn (tender; rare [as in steak]) and 恁 nèn (=那么/这么 [dialect]). Isn't it funny how you tend to remember characters with rare pronunciations better than those with many (shi, shi, shi, anyone?).
ReplyDeleteP.S. What about 能 néng - there's only one isn't here? In my Google Pinyin Input only 能 comes up, but in my 步步高 it allows me to input both 能 and 而 and 耐, interestingly enough. Archaic pronunciations perhaps?
ReplyDelete