打鸡血

打雞血

dǎjīxuè

phrase

Meanings

1 to inject chicken blood (lit.)
2 to be manically fired up
3 to pump (someone) up with hollow enthusiasm (often used mockingly)

Characters

to hit, to inject

Examples

他今天像打了鸡血一样，一上午发了二十封邮件。

Tā jīntiān xiàng dǎ le jīxuè yīyàng, yí shàngwǔ fā le èrshí fēng yóujiàn.

He's like he's been injected with chicken blood today — fired off twenty emails in one morning.

老板开完会就给员工打鸡血。

Lǎobǎn kāi wán huì jiù gěi yuángōng dǎjīxuè.

After the meeting the boss pumped up the staff with hollow hype.

Tips

history

In the late 1960s a discredited Chinese folk therapy actually injected fresh rooster blood into patients as a supposed cure-all; it caused fevers and fatalities and was banned. The hyped-up, flushed, agitated state of early recipients became the metaphor: to 打鸡血 is to act like someone riding that artificial high.

usage

Neutral in energy context ('I'm pumped!'), skeptical in workplace context ('the boss is trying to 打鸡血 again'). The causative form 给...打鸡血 = 'to hype (someone) up'.

Stroke Order

打 dǎ

鸡 jī

血 xuè