The obscene battle-cry of a Ming Dynasty war hero

The obscene battle-cry of a Ming Dynasty war hero: "
Here's a close-up of an image that's been making the rounds of forums and microblogs over the past few months:

Yuan Chonghuan's famous slogan

Yuan Chonghuan (袁崇焕) was a Ming Dynasty general famous for defeating Nurhaci at the Battle of Ningyuan, which put a temporary halt to the Manchu invasion.


Yuan's ancestral home in Dongguan, Guanggdong, has been turned into a memorial park. Inscribed on the base of a stone statue of Yuan is his battle-cry, shown in the above photo. The text:

掉哪媽！頂硬上！

FUCK HIS MOM! HIT THE HARD!


“頂硬上”成了輕騎護京的主旋律，“掉哪媽”成了眾人罵昏君的助語詞。

'Hit the hard' as the main melody of Yuan's army when they hurried to the capital to rescue the country, And 'fuck his mom' became the starting word for cursing fatuous emperors.

The translation isn't perfect, but unlike many previous examples, the profanity is entirely appropriate.


'掉哪妈' (diu na ma) is a widely used colloquial Cantonese expression that has a variety of written forms. The character 掉 is used in place of 屌 (diu2, 'penis' as a noun, and 'fuck' as a verb), but is now a far less common substitute than 丢 or 刁. (In Hong Kong, the recent construction [門+小] is often used.)


Here's how the Cantonese Profanity Research Web explains the phrase:

As written, it literally means 'fuck your mother' (那 na is a fusion of 你阿 nei a: 你阿媽 nei ama, 'your mother'), but it is not ordinarily meant as an insult, but is mainly used instead to express anger, displeasure, astonishment, disappointment, and so forth...the tone is similar to the Mandarin 他妈的 (tamade, 'His mother's...') or 他奶奶的 (tanainaide, 'His granny's...').

Yuan Chonghuan's statue at his ancestral home

'Hit the Hard,' on the other hand, is a simply a mechanical mistranslation of an exhortation to forge stubbornly onward. The phrase has been called an encapsulation of the 'Cantonese Spirit,' and it appears in a coolie chant cited in various places online:

嗨呀嗨哟，顶硬上啰，鬼叫你穷啊

Hi-yo, hi-yo. Go all out! No one told you to be poor!

So Yuan Chonghuan's battle-cry, supposedly uttered when his superiors ordered a general retreat to Shanhaiguan as the Manchu armies were closing in on Ningyuan, could conceivably be translated as 'Fuck that! We'll give it all we've got!'

Links and Sources

• Noman's Sina Microblog: Statue of Yuan Chonghuan in Dongguan, original image
• Cantonese Profanity Research Web (Chinese): diu na ma explanation
• Guangzhou Daily (Chinese): 'Go all out' as the 'Cantonese Spirit' (2003)
• Wikipedia: Diu (Cantonese), Yuan Chonghuan
• Baidu Baike (Chinese): 顶硬上

Tags: Dongguan, profanity, translation, Yuan Chonghuan

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One of the father's of modern analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung. I believe him much more insightful than Freud, even tho his often medieval bent probably has more to do with his childhood than with objective meaning. But I suppose it was a vital era for the modern world. I think he's great. Particularly for 'On the Nature of Psyche' and his non-sexual take on libidinal and psychic energy.

Bruce Lee's writings first introduced me to Taoism. Specifically in his book "Tao of Jeet Kune Do". Whilst clearly somewhat open to violence, and the indulgences of celebrity, Bruce still has a lot to impart. His writings on the mindset of fighting are applicable to all types of challenges. Inside this man has a peace which served him well through life, and every fight he had.

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Timothy Leary. Okay, he did way too many drugs. But in so doing, he brought great lessons to the world. The most worthy work of his I've read is "Your Brain is God" in which he outlines what best helps to define the bounds of a self, and does so with many insights to culture, and his view of the world. Read Leary so you don't have to mess with your own brain chemistry.

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Backronym - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Backronym - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A backronym (or bacronym or also retronym) is a phrase that is constructed "after the fact" from a previously existing word or abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. The term is a false acronym, and sometimes used to refer to the initialism or acronym itself,^[1] but usually in those cases, it is a "replacement" backronym, the abbreviation already having an associated phrase. When the backronym phrase becomes more popular than the original, the word becomes an anacronym. (But other than that, backronyms and anacronyms have little to do with each other.)

The word backronym is a neologism, coined in 1983.^[2]

An example of a backronym from the word acronym is as follows.

Acronyms Condense Representations Of Neologisms You Memorize

In this example, because the word acronym itself is not an acronym, the phrase above is a pure backronym, not a replacement backronym. Since the phrase indirectly refers to the word itself, it is also apronymic. If this backronym helps you remember the word acronym or backronym, then it is also a mnemonic.