''Diu'' (

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

: 屌,

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

cangjie: 𨳒 ��+小

jyutping The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanization Scheme, also known as Jyutping, is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed in 1993 by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK). The name ''Jyutping'' (itself the Jyutping ro ...

: diu2) is a common profanity in

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

. It can be regarded as the Cantonese equivalent of the English ''

fuck ''Fuck'' () is profanity in the English language that often refers to the act of sexual intercourse, but is also commonly used as an intensifier or to convey disdain. While its origin is obscure, it is usually considered to be first attested ...

''.

In classic Chinese

''Diu'' is a word in the

Cantonese language Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic languages, Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River ...

. It appears frequently in the text of the classic novel ''

Water Margin ''Water Margin'' (), also called ''Outlaws of the Marsh'' or ''All Men Are Brothers'', is a Chinese novel from the Ming dynasty that is one of the preeminent Classic Chinese Novels. Attributed to Shi Nai'an, ''Water Margin'' was one of the e ...

'', and is written as

鳥 Radical 196 or radical bird () meaning "bird" is one of the 6 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 11 strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 750 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. (5 strokes) ...

(meaning "bird", pronounced niǎo in Mandarin and niu5 in Cantonese when used in this usual sense). It is used as an emphatic

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

with a function similar to the English "fucking", "bloody" or "god damned". For example,

''Water Margin'', Chp. 29

''Diu'' means primarily the

penis A penis (; : penises or penes) is a sex organ through which male and hermaphrodite animals expel semen during copulation (zoology), copulation, and through which male placental mammals and marsupials also Urination, urinate. The term ''pen ...

. It is written as 屌 when used in this sense, but usually as 鳥 when used as an emphatic adjective. For example,

''
Romance of the Western Chamber ''Romance of the Western Chamber'' (), also translated as ''The Story of the Western Wing'', ''The West Chamber'', ''Romance of the Western Bower'' and similar titles, is one of the most famous China, Chinese dramatic works. It was written by the ...
'' (), Act 5, Scene 3 ()

has its female equivalent 屄 (pronounced bī in Mandarin and hai1 in Cantonese) in the traditional Chinese written language. In the Yuan Dynasty operas, the word, meaning penis, is sometimes written as 頹. For example,

''lan jiao'' (), Act 1 ()

In Hong Kong and Macau

The written form is mainly seen in Hong Kong, although the younger generation use for example on

graffiti Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...

. In Cantonese, it is used as a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that entails one or more transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose ...

meaning to

copulate Sexual intercourse (also coitus or copulation) is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion of the erect male penis inside the female vagina and followed by thrusting motions for sexual pleasure, reproduction, or both.Sexual inte ...

. In a manner similar to the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

word

, it is also used to express dismay, disgrace, disapproval and so on. For example, someone may shout "diu nei!" ("fuck you!" or "fuck off!") at somebody when he or she finds that other person annoying. "Diu nei lou mou" (, "fuck your mother")Hutton, Christopher and Bolton, Kingsley; A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang, page 95; University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu; 2005 is a highly offensive profanity in Cantonese when directed against a specific person instead of used as a general exclamation. In contrast to the English phrase "fuck your mother", which indicates that the person being attacked commits sexual acts with his own mother, the Cantonese expression has the implied meaning of "I fuck your mother". The form is absent in the

Big-5 Big-5 or Big5 ( zh, t=大五碼) is a Chinese character encoding method used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau for traditional Chinese characters. The People's Republic of China (PRC), which uses simplified Chinese characters, uses the GB 18030 ...

character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...

on computers. The

Government of Hong Kong The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (commonly known as the Hong Kong Government or HKSAR Government) is the executive authorities of Hong Kong. It was established on 1 July 1997, following the handover of Hong Kong. ...

has extended

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

and the Big-5 character set with the

Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set The Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (; commonly abbreviated to HKSCS) is a set of Chinese characters – 4,702 in total in the initial release—used in Standard Cantonese, Cantonese, as well as when writing the List of places in Hong Kong, ...

(HKSCS), which includes Chinese characters only used in Cantonese, including the Five Great Profanities. The government explained that the reason for these characters being included is to allow for the

Hong Kong Police The Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) is the primary law enforcement, investigative agency, and largest Hong Kong Disciplined Services, disciplined service under the Security Bureau (Hong Kong), Security Bureau of Hong Kong. Pursuant to the one c ...

to record criminal suspects' statements. Consequently, these characters are now also in Unicode. In Hong Kong Cantonese, ''yiu'' (), ''tiu'' (), ''siu'' (), ''chiu'' (), ''biu'' (), and ''hiu'' () are all

minced oath A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo word or phrase to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics. An example is "gosh ...

s for ''diu'', as they all rhyme with "iu".

References

External links

廣州話粗口研究網
*{{in lang, ja}

Culture of Hong Kong Cantonese words and phrases Cantonese profanity

In classic Chinese

In Hong Kong and Macau

See also

References

Further reading

External links