1

I was looking up the meaning of 咬人猫 on google translate. 咬人猫 translated to 

Bite the cat

I know a little bit of kanji and know that 人 means person/human/man ... and 猫 means cat. So "Bite the cat" surprised me as there is nothing related to "person/human ... ".

Unconvinced, I tried 咬猫 which also translated to 

Bite the cat

Now I realised Google is just messing me with, LOL. Anyway, jokes aside, I tried the 人猫 next, which translated to 

Human cat

This made more sense to me.

Looking up further, I got the following

咬 yǎo
    （指用牙）bite

   被狗/蛇咬了一口
     get bitten by a dog/snake

So after all this, I was pretty sure it is thing related to "bite" and "human cat". So, I believe 咬人猫 should be something like 

biting human cat

So what is the actual meaning?

PS: No idea of Chinese language and sub-par knowledge of kanji. Was just curious, so ended up here :)

Improve this question
3
  • 咬人猫 means 'cat that bite human'. XD. No 咬猫 or 人猫. But there is 猫人 for human cat.
    – sfy
    Oct 7, 2017 at 19:04
  • Human-biting cat. 咬人 means (v.) to bite human or (adj.) human-biting.
    – NS.X.
    Oct 7, 2017 at 19:09
  • @NS.X. So it's the other way around. Thanks. In that case, what will biting human-cat be? And by human-cat, I mean something like a cat-man, if that makes any sense. Will it be like 咬猫人?
    – user18093
    Oct 7, 2017 at 20:19

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
3

Well, in Taiwan, "咬人猫" is the local name of urtica thunbergiana (蕁麻).

It's a poisonous plant.

enter image description here enter image description here

The moral is: don't rely on google translate solely :)

Improve this answer
1
  • So how is the local name pronounced?
    – user18093
    Oct 8, 2017 at 2:57
2

You're enough to make jokes... 咬人猫 just a nikename of an account of famous website.She's a cute girl,and made some videos.enter image description here

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    looks like this is not a simple language question.
    – sfy
    Oct 8, 2017 at 16:32
0

Well, an Australian women I know, here in China, took in a cat from the streets, because she felt sorry for it. It turned out to be a 咬人猫，it bit her arm badly and she had to pay 2000 RMB for an anti-rabies injection!

In English, we use relative clauses a lot for description:

That is the cat [that bites people]. [relative clause]

Chinese mostly puts this kind of description in front of the noun, so we get:

That is a [bites people] cat   
那是只[咬人的]猫。

A person who bites cats (probably not many of them！) would be 

一个咬猫的人

Batman is 蝙蝠侠 which is 'bat knight/hero'
Superman is 超人 which is 'surpass person'

If a hypothetical Catman were a hero, you could maybe call him '猫侠‘, but if he was evil than possibly '恶猫人’ and if this villain bites people, that could be expressed as thus: 

  恶猫人再次咬了一个人
  Catman has bitten someone again

Did I just hear a bloodcurdling 'Meow'? Oh no, it's Catm ..... arrrgh!

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.