The Resou Dictionary

Words the translate button gives up on

Slang the Chinese internet uses every day, defined in English and cited from real comment sections. Numbered, filed, and never published without receipts.

ENTRY #000 热搜 rè sōu “trending, with a hand on the dial” RESOU is 热搜 in pinyin: rè sōu, the hot search. English has “trending” — a number that happens to you. 热搜 is a place. You can be put there, and you can be taken down again within the hour. Every story on this site starts with the same two questions: how did this get on the list, and who wanted it there? OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #001 momo “the shared alias” momo is not a person. It is the name millions of Chinese users wear at once — same handle, same stock cartoon avatar — so that anything they say arrives unsigned. Not a burner account. A costume everyone owns. OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #002 眼前一黑 yǎn qián yì hēi “and everything went dark” The words describe fainting — the split second when your vision goes black. Online they describe reading something so stupid, so cringeworthy, or so exhausting that your body files a formal complaint. It is the closest Chinese has to “I physically cannot.” OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #003 能工智人 néng gōng zhì rén “the working sapiens” Swap the first and last characters of 人工智能 — artificial intelligence — and you get 能工智人: a Homo sapiens that can work. Chinese office workers spent the summer of 2026 describing themselves as language models: finite tokens, a cheap afternoon tier, an overnight refresh. OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #004 望周知 wàng zhōu zhī “please be advised” Three characters that close a real official notice, the way an English memo ends PLEASE BE ADVISED. Online they get stapled to things no institution would ever announce — your own depleted attention span, a discount at a scenic spot — and the joke is always the same: the voice of an authority, arriving on behalf of nobody. OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #005 普信男 pǔ xìn nán “so ordinary, so confident” A compression of 普通却自信 — ordinary, yet confident. It does not mean stupid, or ugly, or even rude. It names one specific gap: the distance between what a man has actually done and the terms on which he believes he is owed your attention. OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #010 背锅 bēi guō to take the fall — especially for blame that belongs elsewhere 背锅 turns blame into cookware and responsibility into a load somebody must physically carry. It means to take the fall, usually before the real cause has been fixed and often for a mistake that belongs to somebody else. English can preserve the unfairness or the object. The Chinese word keeps both within reach — which is why the internet keeps drawing the wok. OPEN THE ENTRY → ENTRY #011 抽象 chōu xiàng so far outside ordinary logic that the wrongness becomes the aesthetic Standard Chinese gives 抽象 the sober job of meaning ‘abstract.’ The internet gives it work after reality has stopped making sense: a style, object or situation can become 抽象 when its logic is broken, its appearance is bizarre and the failure itself is funny. It may be criticism, affection or both. The translator must choose among surreal, unhinged, absurd and wild; the Chinese word keeps all four within reach. OPEN THE ENTRY →

Words the translate button gives up on

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