Got this off Weibo. What does 大秀香肩美背 mean? Particularly that 大 seems odd there..
【熊乃瑾秀香肩美背 性感造型女人味十足】女星@熊乃瑾xiong 近日在意大利为某杂志拍摄了一组复古时尚大片，大秀香肩美背。
Thank you
2 Answers
We all know that 大 means big. It can be used on things like 大香蕉（big banana). 大 can also be used to verb. When used to verb it means this action is really big. So 大 + verb means doing something really hard or doing something in a high profile or doing something very much(like thank you very much )
So here 熊乃瑾 was trying so hard to "秀香肩美背" in a high profile.
Similar examples:
大展宏图， 大赦天下, 大快人心
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1Thanks, but what does 秀香肩美背 mean? My best guess is showing off her body?– rabbidCommented Nov 14, 2013 at 15:03
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2@rabbid your guess is right! 秀 means to show off. 香 and 美 are both commonly used when describing a woman's body. But you can't say 香背 or 美肩: these collocations are kind of fixed..– araxCommented Nov 14, 2013 at 16:29
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1@rabbid yeah as Alex Su said, "秀" is a borrowing word from the English word "show". There are a lot of Chinese words which was borrowed from English. "沙发" as "sofa", “香波” as "shampoo", "酷！" as "cool！“ Commented Nov 14, 2013 at 17:44
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Wow so "秀" is supposed to sound like "show"? Is that what you mean @zyc? That is very interesting :) Thanks!– rabbidCommented Nov 15, 2013 at 2:58
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@AlexSu thanks a lot for the explanation. Is 香肩美背 then commonly used as a set phrase to describe the act of showing off one's body?– rabbidCommented Nov 15, 2013 at 3:00
Here “大” is used to emphasise the degree of doing something as very high, so “大秀” means she showed a lot. “香肩美背” actually means “shoulder and back”, in Chinese we have many special words to describe women and their body, these words usually express the the beauty of women’s body or body parts like shoulder, back, cheek, lips, etc, so here “香” and “美” are used to describe this lady’s shoulder and back.
