
In English, when someone is beautiful beyond words, we call them stunning, alluring, or even “drop-dead gorgeous.” However, in Chinese, we take it one step further and say 沉鱼落雁 chén yú, luò yàn. While, in some cases, a bit of well-deserved flattery can be nice, this expression has a generally negative meaning to it. When one of the students is constantly raising their hand to answer questions and trying to be a teacher’s pet, it is the perfect example of someone doing 拍马屁. 拍马屁 – Pāi mǎ pìĪnother one of the many funny Chinese words related to a horse is 拍马屁 pāi mǎ pì, or to “beat the bottom of a horse.” It means that the person is a suck-up or a total kiss-ass. Nonetheless, the horse’s legs are open for all to see and judge. Typically, this phrase has a negative meaning and indicates that someone’s exposed motives are evil or ill intent. One of them is 露马脚 lòu mǎ jiǎo which means to “expose horse legs.” This idiomatic expression means to have your plans revealed or that a person’s true purpose or real intention has come into the limelight. There are so many funny Chinese words that are about horses. It’s a losing battle, and they might as well go fishing atop a tree and still have the same result as getting into this university. With an acceptance rate of only 1%, this is where you would laugh at your friend and tell them that it’s a lost cause. Still, they have the lowest test scores in the entire class. This sentence translates as “climb a tree to catch a fish.”įor example, your friend tells you that they want to go to the prestigious Beijing University. The saying 缘木求鱼 yuán mù qiú yú in Mandarin Chinese means to do something that cannot be done or is impossible.

And while the horse, goose, and cat are all basic vocabulary words, did you know that sometimes they have different meanings depending on the context? So while the following Chinese phrases have something to do with animals, they might mean the complete opposite of what you would assume! 1. When studying foreign languages, some of the first words you learn are the names of animals.

你吃错药了吗?– Nǐ chī cuò yào le ma? Funny Chinese words related to animals
