| Blog of Carl Gene Fordham | Thursday, 18 April 2024 - 11:30 |
Mini-post today – a good, old-fashioned synonyms list, this time pertaining to “condom” in Mandarin:
1. 避孕套 bìyùntào – “avoid-pregnancy-cover” (most common)
2. 安全套 ānquántào – “safety-cover”
3. 保險套 bǎoxiǎntào – “ensurance cover”
4. 阴茎套 yīnjīngtào – “penis-cover”
5. 衛生套 wèishēngtào – “hygiene-cover”
6. 套儿 tàor – “coverrr” (informal)
7. 如意套 rúyìtào – “as-one-wishes-cover” (Singapore/Malaysia)
Enjoy!
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Carl Gene Fordham is a Chinese/English translator and Mandarin/English interpreter based in Brisbane, Australia.
傅君恺（Carl Gene Fordham），中英翻译，现居澳大利亚布里斯班。
Learn more about Carl here.
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如意 can also mean priest’s staff in Japanese.
Never heard anyone using “阴茎套” or “衛生套”, at least not anywhere north of Xi’an (included)… “阴茎” is quie academic term in Mandarin, and it feels very out of place using it in any daily oral conversation. A good equivalent would be saying “That male instance of Homo Sapien just fell down” instead of “that man is falling down”. I guess this one only exists on package prints. In verbal conversation we have a million nicknames for the manhood…
如意套 sounds hilarious. Almost more than sex. XD
Agreed. I was almost not going to include 阴茎套 and 卫生套 until a quick Google Books search revealed that they actually are in use, at least in print anyway.
I guess 如意套 is a reference to Sun Wukong’s 如意棒, which can change size at will. I guess the only kind of cover suitable for enclosing a 如意棒 is a 如意套. Clever.
My girlfriend has used 套套. Not really sure if that is her personal word, or common, but figured I would throw it in there. Seems a pretty natural slang for oral mandarin.
套套actually is also very common in oral speaking.
BTW, in my hometown’s dialect, we use 套儿 to describe someone’s BF or GF, bhahaha.
Or just 套 on its own?