In Slang
Firstly, tortoises and turtles are regarded as insufficiently virile. So "to wear a green hat" (i.e., to look like a tortoise or turtle) is to be cuckolded (simplified Chinese: 戴绿帽子; traditional Chinese: 戴綠帽子; pinyin: dài lǜmàozi). Same goes with the expression "to wear a green scarf" (simplified Chinese: 戴绿头巾; traditional Chinese: 戴綠頭巾; pinyin: dài lǜtóujīn)
Secondly, "sea turtle" (simplified Chinese: 海龟; traditional Chinese: 海龜; pinyin: hǎi gūi) is slang for a returnee, a Chinese person who has studied abroad and returned home. (There is also a pun here, as hǎi gūi is also 海归, "to come back home from overseas"). The term has positive connotations, implying a dynamic ability to travel across the ocean. By contrast, "kelp" (simplified Chinese: 海带; traditional Chinese: 海帶; pinyin: hǎi dài), is used to describe an unemployed returnee. It has negative overtones, implying the person is drifting aimlessly, and is also a homophonic expression (Chinese: 海待; pinyin: hǎidài, literally "sea waiting").
Read more about this topic: Cultural Depictions Of Turtles And Tortoises
Famous quotes containing the word slang:
“It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)