屌 (diǎo) · penis

Meanings

1 penis
2 cool; extraordinary
3 to fuck

Characters

屌

diǎo

penis; (slang) cool

Examples

HSK 1

这也太屌了吧！

Zhè yě tài diǎo le ba!

This is way too cool!

Tips

register

Highly vulgar in its literal sense. In internet slang, 屌 is used as an adjective meaning 'awesome/badass', similar to how English uses certain profanities as compliments. Still considered crude. The 'to fuck' sense is Cantonese.

Components

radical

尸 shī

body; corpse (radical)

Top-left body radical - originally a pictograph of a seated or reclining figure, used as the indexing radical for body-position chars (居 reside, 屁 fart, 尿 urinate). It tags 屌 anatomically as a body part, with the slightly crude register that 尸-radical body words tend to carry.

phonetic

吊 diào

to hang; suspend

Tucked under the 尸 wrapper, 吊 supplies the sound - diào shifting to diǎo through a tone change. A blunt semantic flavor also leaks in: 吊 pictures something hanging down, which is exactly the anatomical picture for the literal meaning. From there the slang 'cool, badass' sense developed by joking extension in modern internet speech.