肏 🔊

Usage examples

• 肏你！
  Cào nǐ!
  Fuck you!
• 肏，好痛！
  Cào, hǎo tòng!
  Fuck, that really hurts!

Etymology

肏 (cào) is the actual written Chinese character for the act of sexual intercourse in its crudest form, making it the direct graphic equivalent of the English word "fuck." The character is a compound of 人 (rén, person) on top of 肉 (ròu, flesh/meat), visually depicting the act it describes — a pictographic construction that underscores its explicitness. Because of this transparency, 肏 is considered far more extreme than the common expletive 他妈的 (tā mā de) or even spoken "cào," since writing it out leaves no ambiguity. The character was historically rare in print due to censorship and taboo, and it is still absent from most standard Chinese dictionaries. Its Pinyin romanization is "cào," 4th tone.

Cultural notes

肏 occupies the very top of the Chinese vulgarity scale. While the spoken word "cào" is widespread in street speech and online discourse, the actual character 肏 is rarely written in formal contexts and is filtered by nearly all Chinese social media platforms and censorship systems. Many Chinese speakers prefer the substitute character 操 (cào, meaning "to grasp/operate") as a visually safer stand-in when typing, preserving the sound while obscuring the explicit meaning. The character 肏 appears in classical erotic literature and is attested in historical manuscripts, but its modern use is almost entirely confined to extremely blunt speech, graffiti, and uncensored online spaces. Encountering the actual character in writing signals an intentional choice to be maximally crude or confrontational.

Same meaning, other languages

Accuracy

64% of 11 voters say this translation is accurate.