I see this word popping up on Weibo and Taobao. It's not written with any character, but spelled out in Pinyin. What does it mean?
EDIT:
For the annals:
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Not sure if the "mandarin" tag really works here or not...haha...it's Jackie Chan we're talking about after all!– Mou某 ♦Mar 10, 2015 at 4:06
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Well, If you read 'duang' on taobao.com, it has definitely made it into Mandarin slang. State media has also used it.– imrekMar 10, 2015 at 7:02
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It will pass quickly. I've seen words like this many times. This one doesn't have the attribute to last.– user1228520Mar 11, 2015 at 0:56
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A lot of non-Mandarin slang is found all over the place, doesn't make it mandarin.– Mou某 ♦Mar 11, 2015 at 2:59
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Way before the Internet, "duang", (an onomatopoeia), has been used to indicate something that happens or springs up suddenly. "Duang" would be what a coiled spring under tension would sound like if it uncoils quickly. Like "twang".– Wayne CheahJul 25, 2020 at 3:29
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3 Answers
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/duang-how-jackie-chan-helped-780040
Citation, with explanation of the word in bold:
Think that your hair is looking particularly good today? In Chinese popular culture, it's looking "duang."
A Chinese phrase that came out of nowhere, "duang" has taken the Internet by storm, even though many don't really know its origins.
We do know where "duang" started though. It was Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan, who in 2004 was featured in a shampoo infomercial, where he spread his hands and described how his sleek dark locks would simply "duang" after a scrub with Bawang organic shampoo. A useful way of translating the word is as "boing," in the sense of "bouncy and vibrant," or even "ta-da!"
A parody video making fun of the old commercial recently hit the web, making the word a social media trend. It's been widely interpreted as "cool," and the word resurfaced again recently after Chan posted it on his Weibo page. It has become to Chinese slang what Kim Kardashian's rear end is to U.S. popular culture. It's breaking the Internet as Chinese pop stars are called "duang pretty" and the like.
Although it's a long way from featuring in a dictionary, it's been used millions of times on the Chinese social network Weibo and has been looked up 1.5 million times on China's biggest search engine, Baidu.
In case you're "duang confused," you just need to know that "everyone's "duang-ing" and it's great" or "This is so duang hot" are the kinds of comments you see on the Weibo social network these days.
There have also been numerous mash-up videos, and apparently during the visit of Britain's Prince William to China last week, he was greeted by some people saying "duang, duang," because the English gentry look is seen as cool in China.
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apparently you can also "duang" something- meaning adding extra whiz-bang to it. I think. Mar 10, 2015 at 0:09
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@MasterSparkles In that sense, the English translation would be "zhoosh it up." urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=zhoosh Mar 10, 2015 at 0:56
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2Hollywood Reporter is kind of making it into a bigger thing than it actually is, I'm sure everyone will have forgotten about duang by next week....– Mou某 ♦Mar 10, 2015 at 6:44
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1I think the only way of using it that makes sense is using it as a single onomatopoetic word like in 'Duang! Now they are twice as big.' Other usages are floating around. But I think that's just the cyber populations trying to make most fun out of it, but using it as a verb doesn't really seem as much catchy and could be confusing. (native Mandarine speaker) Mar 11, 2015 at 1:00
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ModL1vD1A7U
It means cool, damn or whatever you want it to mean. Informally, the character is 成 over 龙, that is after the innovator.
Following what 倪阔乐 mentioned, here is a helpful visualization for how the newly formed pseudo-character looks like:
