The written form of diu commonly seen in Hong Kong

Diu (Traditional Chinese: 屌 Hong Kong coinage: 𨳒 [門+小] jyutping: diu2 pinyin: diǎo) is a common profanity in Cantonese. It can be regarded as the Cantonese equivalent of the English fuck. In Mandarin, it is equivalent to the English "dick". The character, in Mandarin, is also used by young people in Taiwan to mean "cool" (in this context it is not censored on TV broadcasts). Image File history File links The Chinese Character of Diu File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Traditional Chinese (Traditional Chinese: 正體字/繁體字, Simplified Chinese: 正体字/繁体字) refers to one of two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. ... Jyutping (sometimes spelled Jyutpin) is a romanization system for Standard Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) in 1993. ... Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ), is the most common variant of Standard Mandarin romanization system in use. ... This article is about all of the Cantonese (Yue) dialects. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Map of eastern China and Taiwan, showing the historic distribution of Mandarin Chinese in light brown. ... This article is on all of the Northern and Southwestern Chinese dialects. ...

In classic Chinese texts

Diu is an old word in the vernacular Chinese language. For instance, it appears frequently in the text of the classic novel Water Margin, and is written as 鳥 (meaning "bird", pronounced niǎo in Mandarin and niu5 in Cantonese when used in this usual sense). It is used as an emphatic adjective with a function similar to the English "fucking", "bloody" or "god damned". For example, Vernacular Chinese is a style or register of the written Chinese language essentially modeled after the spoken language and associated with Standard Mandarin. ... It has been suggested that Guo Shiguang be merged into this article or section. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ...

武松指著蔣門神，說道：「休言你這廝鳥蠢漢！景陽岡上那隻大蟲，也只三拳兩腳，我兀自打死了！量你這個直得甚麼！快交割還他！但遲了些個，再是一頓，便一發結果了你廝！」Water Margin, Chp. 29

Diu means primarily the penis. It is written as 屌 when used in this sense, but usually as 鳥 when used as an emphatic adjective. For example, The penis (plural penises, penes) is an external male sexual organ. ...

木寸、馬户、尸巾，你道我是個「村驢屌」？Romance of the West Chamber (西廂記), Act 5, Scene 3 (第五本第三折) Romance of the West Chamber (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) (record/story of the west chamber/room) is one of the most famous Chinese dramatic works. ...

屌 has its female equivalent 屄 (pronounced bī in Mandarin and bei1 in Cantonese) in the traditional Chinese written language. In the Yuan Dynasty operas, the word, meaning penis, is sometimes written as 頹. For example, Qu (曲) is a kind of lyric Chinese poetry. ...

我見了些覓前程俏女娘，見了些鐵心腸男子漢，便一生里孤眠，我也直甚頹！Jiu Fengchen (救風塵), Act 1 (第一折)

In Hong Kong

The written form 𨳒 [門+小] is mainly seen in Hong Kong, for example, on graffiti. In Cantonese, it is used as a transitive verb meaning to copulate. In a manner similar to the English word fuck, 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. For other uses, see Graffiti (disambiguation). ... A transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects. ... A pair of lions having sexual intercourse in the Maasai Mara, Kenya. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

"Diu lei loh moh!" (屌你老母 "fuck your mother") or "Diu lei loh mei" (屌你老味), a euphemism, is a highly offensive profanity in Cantonese when directed against a specific person instead of used as a general exclamation. In Cantonese, the meaning "I fuck your mother" is implied, as opposed to English, in which the phrase "fuck your mother" is an imperative. A euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener; or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ...

The form 𨳒 is absent in the Big-5 character set on computers. The Government of Hong Kong has extended Unicode and the Big-5 character set with the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (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 to record criminal suspects' statements. Consequently, these characters are now also in Unicode. For other uses, see big five (disambiguation). ... A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ... Other Hong Kong topics Culture - Economy Education - Geography - History Hong Kong Portal The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China (Traditional Chinese: ; see pronunciation; conventional short name Hong Kong Government, 香港政府), led by the Chief Executive is responsible for the administration of Hong... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... 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 exclusively in Cantonese. ... The Hong Kong Police Force (香港警察) (from 1969 to 1997, Royal Hong Kong Police Force (皇家香港警察) is the police force of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

In English, "damn" gives birth to its euphemism "darn"; similarly in Cantonese, especially Hong Kong Cantonese, diu has yiu (妖) and Tiu (挑) "siu"(小) as its euphemisms.

See also

• Cantonese profanity
• Hong Kong Cantonese
• Mandarin slang
• List of Cantonese-related topics

The following is a list of Cantonese profanity. ... Hong Kong Cantonese (traditional Chinese: ) is a variant of Cantonese, one of the spoken forms of the Chinese language, spoken in Hong Kong. ... In some ways, Mandarin Chinese slang terms and insults resemble their English counterparts. ... This is a list of Cantonese-related topics Contents // Categories: Stub | Topic lists ...

Further reading

• Robert S. Bauer and Paul K. Benedict (1997). Modern Cantonese Phonology. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3110148935. Part of the chapter 3 concerns the "bad" words in Cantonese.
• Kingsley Bolton and Christopher Hutton, "Bad boys and bad language: chou hau and the sociolinguistics of swearwords in Hong Kong Cantonese", in Grant Evans and Maria Tam ed. (1997). Hong Kong: the Anthropology of a Chinese Metropolis. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ISBN 0700706011.

External links

• (Chinese) 廣州話粗口研究網
• (Japanese) 広東語の粗口