Verbing for the Summer

Summer is over, but I can’t help sharing this 一下 / 一夏 pun:

喝一夏,冰一夏

It reads:

喝一夏,冰一夏

The “喝一夏” part is punning on a very common use of 一下 after a verb, whereas the “冰一夏” part is punning on the same usage in a less typical way.

An uninspired translation would be, “have a drink and cool off.” (Sorry, I have no inspired translation!)

Share

John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. Nicki Johnson Says: October 25, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    Drink all summer for a summer long cool

    • Not bad… This is the tricky part: the contradiction between the sound of 一下, which is usually brief, and the characters 一夏, which can mean “all summer”, similar to what you can indicate with 一天 or 一年.

      This is the complexity I was avoiding in the name of a quick post. 🙂

  2. Titus Tao Says: November 6, 2016 at 9:01 am

    take a sip, all summer long,

    cool down a while, all summer long?

Leave a Reply