All about eating (II) (slang)

秀色可餐(xiu4 se4 ke3 can)  It compares the beauty of a woman to food. Her beauty is such that you can eat it. 秀色means beauty; 餐to eat.

吃香(chi xiang) It means to be well-liked, popular, highly-valued, or much sought after. For example, you may say the NBA sensation Taiwanese- descent Jeremy Lin has been quite吃香on basketball court these days.

吃閉門羹(chi bi4 men2 geng) to be denied entrance; to be rejected. 閉門means closed door; 羹, thick soup. Take Jeremy Lin again for example. Before going to college, he mailed video of him playing basketball to all the universities of Ivy League as well as some others such as UCLA for admission. But only Harvard and Brown promised him a place on the school team. We can say Lin applied to those colleges but吃了閉門羹

吃啞巴虧 When a mute is taken advantage of or has incurred a false accusation, he can’t get even by telling. We may use吃啞巴虧to refer to such a situation when you can’t tell the truth or get even for some reason faced with a false accusation. 吃虧means to be at a disadvantage;啞巴, mute.

吃醋(chi cu4) : It means getting jealous while literally meaning “eating vinegar.” I’ve talked about the allusion in my previous writing “Seven things after you open the door (II).” in July, 2011. Sometimes we also use 吃味(chi wei4) (eating again!) to mean the same.

吃力(chi li4) If a job is very tough and strenuous and you’re having a hard time doing it, you can use the term to describe the job or the situation. 力means strength or force. To make it worse, you are straining to finish a tiring job but no one seems to be pleased or appreciate your hard work. You might scream: “This is really吃力不討好(chi li4 bu4 tao3 hao3)!”

(TO BE CONTINUED)

吃閉門羹=吃闭门羹

吃啞巴虧=吃哑巴亏