"給力"登上紐約時報 各國羣衆紛紛圍觀

Geili 給力

Chinese Internet buzzword which means “cool,” “awesome” or “exciting.” Literally, “giving power.”
中國的網絡詞彙，含義是“酷”、“很棒”或者“有勁”，字面意思是“給予力量”。

The Shanghai Daily reported that a Chinese neologism, “geili,” which means, “cool,” “awesome” or “exciting,” had been granted the “official seal of approval” by appearing in The People’s Daily – the official paper of the Communist Party:
上海日報報道說，一個漢語新詞“給力”，意爲“酷”、“很棒”或者“有勁”登上了黨報《人民日報》，代表着這個詞已經被官方認可。

“Geili” is created from two Chinese characters “gei” and “li.” Literally, it means “giving power,” but is now widely accepted as an adjective describing something that’s “cool.”
“給力”是兩個漢字“給”和“力” 組成的，字面含義是“給予力量”，但是它現在廣泛用作形容詞，形容什麼東西很“酷”。

A test of a Chinese jargon word’s trendiness is if users translate it into a foreign language, according to its pronunciation. “Geili” has been transformed into the English-sounding “gelivable,” and “ungelivable,” and the French “très guélile.”
檢測一個漢語流行語新潮程度的方法之一是看有沒有使用者把它翻譯成外語（請允許小編偶吐槽下，這是誰定的標準啊~），根據它的發音，“給力”已經被音譯成英語的 “gelivable” 和 “ungelivable”，以及法語的“très guélile”。

But it was the word’s antonym “bugeili” – meaning dull or boring – that first grabbed wider public attention after it appeared online in May in an episode of a Chinese-dubbed Japanese comic animation.
但實際上最先引起廣泛注意的是這個詞的反義詞“不給力”，意思是單調無趣的，這個詞最早是五月出現在一部漢語配音的日本動畫的某集中。

本內容出自紐約時報SCHOTT'S VOCAB 專欄。

專欄介紹：

Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles — some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy. Each day, Schott's Vocab explores news sites around the world to find words and phrases that encapsulate the times in which we live or shed light on a story of note. If language is the archives of history, as Emerson believed, then Schott’s Vocab is an attempt to index those archives on the fly.
簡單的說，這個專欄就是個詞庫，收集全世界新聞站上各種正式的不正式的好玩的詞彙。