Diu (Cantonese)

Diu (Traditional Chinese: ?; Hong Kong coinage: ; Jyutping: diu2; Pinyin: di?o) is a common profanity in Cantonese. It may be regarded as the Cantonese equivalent of the English fuck. The word is sometimes referred jocularly as one of the Five Great Profanities of the Clan Door (????)1 of Cantonese.

Related Topics:
Traditional Chinese - Jyutping - Pinyin - Cantonese - Fuck - 1

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Diu is indeed an old word in the vernacular Chinese language. Anyone familiar with the classic novel Water Margin should know the word by heart, where it is written as ? (which indeed means "birds") and used as an emphatic adjective with a function similar to the English ""fucking", "bloody" or "god damned". For instance,

Related Topics:
Water Margin - Bird - Adjective

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Diu means primarily the penis. It is written as ? when used in this sense, but usually as ? when used as an emphatic adjective. For example,

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? has its female equivalent ? (pronounced pi1 in Mandarin) in the traditional Chinese written language. In the Yuan Dynasty operas, the word, meaing penis, is sometimes written as ?, for instance,

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The written form is mainly seen in Hong Kong, for example, on graffiti. Its creation may be due to the ignorance of the character ?. 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. "Diu nei lo mo!" ("fuck your mother") is a highly offensive profanity in Cantonese when directed against a specific person instead of used as a general exclamation.

Related Topics:
Graffiti - Transitive verb - Copulate - English - Fuck

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Due to the absence of in the Big-5 character set on computers, ? is used instead by some Hong Kongers, though they may think is the "right" character. The Government of Hong Kong has extended Unicode and the Big-5 character set with the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 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.

Related Topics:
Big-5 - Character set - Government of Hong Kong - Unicode - Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set - Hong Kong Police - Criminal

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In English, "damn" gives birth to its euphemism "darn"; similarly in Cantonese, especially Hong Kong Cantonese, diu has yiu (?) and tiu (?) as its euphemism. Some people, however, are not aware that the variations, which they use quite casually, are related to the profane diu.

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