How to Say Cuckold in Chinese

Last night Ping and I watched Lost in Thailand. It was pretty entertaining, and I understood a fair amount of the dialogue because it was a slapstick comedy sort of affair.

Plus they movie taught me how to call someone a cuckold in Chinese. The key phrase is "wear a green hat":

 Dai lu mao zi (戴绿帽子)

Let's break that down and mark out the tones:

Dai4: wear
Lu4: green
mao4 zi: hat

And now you know how to call someone a cuckold in Chinese. Sadly, it's not so simple.

I'll assume you already know the basic pronouns. But suppose an Emperor wanted to say to his subjects, "I'm a cuckold."

Well that's a simple one. He'd say this:

 Zhen dai lu mao zi (朕戴绿帽子)

Well actually he wouldn't. Because the Emperor didn't willing put of his green hat. Someone snuck up and perched that hat on his head before he realized what's going on. So, if our Emperor says, "朕戴绿帽子" people are going to be confused.

What the Emperor has to say is, "他给朕戴绿帽子."

The new bit in this sentence: "Ta gei zhen" means "He gave me". And that zhen is the royal pronoun.

Proles would use the same sentence pattern by replacing the zhen with wo (我).

Now that we can tease ourselves, it is only fair that we learn how to tease others.

The simplest way to do this, I think, is to simply says, "他逼戴绿帽子." Our new word is pronounced bi (逼) and means to force or compelled. And so what we're saying is something like, "He was forced to wear a green hat." Incidentally, 逼 is a homophone for cunt.