Breaking down each word it means thousand autumns.
Why does this mean a playground swing?
Is this a local cantonese word or is it used in mandarin too?
4 Answers
in 唐 dynasty (618-907), there're records of 千秋:
the peom 樓前 by 王建
天寶年前勤政樓
每年三日作千秋
飛龍老馬曾教舞
聞著音聲總舉頭
another one is the 漢武帝後庭鞦韆賦 by 高無際, which stated:
況鞦韆者﹒千秋也﹒
漢武祈千秋之壽﹒
故後宮多鞦韆之樂
later, in 記纂淵海 卷八十九, by 潘自牧 (~1195) of 宋 dynasty (p33-34 of pdf file);
https://archive.org/details/06065623.cn
that the term "鞦韆" was elaborated. mr 潘 claimed that, according to mr 高:
鞦韆﹒漢武帝後庭之戲﹒
本云千秋﹒祝壽之詞也﹒
語訛轉為秋千﹒後人乃旁加革
briefly, it's 千秋 --> 秋千 --> 鞦韆
back to the original question, the game "swing" in cantonese is "千秋", which share the meaning "thousand autumn", a term for wishing for longevity.
lastly, i would say that it's one of the numerous evidences, that cantonese is highly correlated with middle chinese. or, one might say that cantonese preserve more / change less than other "dialects".
have fun :)
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11) There are far more reference of 鞦韆 than 韆鞦 in classical text. 王建's poem looks more like a special case where the poet was just trying to rhyme. 2)
況鞦韆者千秋也could easily interpreted as "鞦韆 sounds like 千秋 (a benediction)" instead of "鞦韆 is in fact 千秋", especially taking context into account. 潘's interpretation of 高 looks odd. Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 9:47 -
great, you notice it. i'm in doubt that mr 高 was not scientific enough, that his saying was not trustable. then, mr 潘 misquote mr 高's text; which make more puzzlements. the rationale i accept their writings is, even these're errors, they're thousand years old. about 2, though your interpretation is acceptable, however, the grammar of [A者, B也] is well established, that most of the time, it says A is B. have fun :)– 水巷孑蠻Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 10:20
Hong Kong Cantonese call playground swing "韆鞦". (we consider 鞦韆 / 秋千 a Mandarin term )
http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/words/36669/
鞦韆
cau1 cin1 (jyutping)
qiu1 qian1 (pinyin)
swing; trapeze
[粵] 韆鞦
In Hong Kong, 韆鞦 is often written as 千秋 by people who either didn't know the correct characters or just want to use characters that have less stokes.
We can tell from the context of a sentence that we are talking about "swing" or "thousand autumns".
more reference
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1The wiki link indicates that cantonese calls the action of swinging on a swing 打韆鞦. This is interesting because in taiwan, we call it 盪鞦韆. Commented Sep 26, 2016 at 5:57
In the process of simplifying Chinese characters, there are rare words that simplified wholely, so each character cannot be considered as the simplified version of the corresponding origin character in this case. For example, the word 衚衕 is simplified to 胡同, 鞦韆 is simplified to 秋千, that means in this case, the characters 胡 is not the simplified characters of 衚, the characters 同 is not the simplified characters of 衕, the characters 鞦 is not the simplified characters of 秋, and the characters 韆 is not the simplified characters of 千. 千秋 may mean thousand autumns literally, it is always the same form from ancient times to now. But if the word 千秋 is another name of a swing (秋千/鞦韆) in some dialect, it should written as 韆鞦 in traditional Chinese.
In mandarin, it's 秋千 (ie the two characters reversed), and 千秋 doesn't mean swing.
It actually has some connection with thousand years. Every swing cycle represents a year of life and you do it many times as a wish for longevity of the child.
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Would the negative voters comment? Even if 千秋 is used to mean swing in the old times, it certainly isn't in mandarin now.– jf328Commented Sep 28, 2016 at 10:45