Word of the Week: xià sǐ wǒ le

If your Halloween costume is particularly scary you might xià sǐ 吓死 some people. xià 吓 means to scare or give a fright and sǐ 死 means to die. xià sǐ means to scare to death. Or you can shout out “xià sǐ wǒ le!” 吓死我了

“xià sǐ wǒ le” is like saying “scared me to death!” And you can use it when you see a scary costume, when you take a particularly unsafe looking ride at a theme park, or when a beggar creeps up on you on the subway without you noticing and makes you jump.

xia si wo le! That ride was scary

If your friend’s Halloween costume is so bad it’s more funny than scary you could say “xiào sǐ wǒ!” (laugh to death)

You can add “sǐ wǒ le” to the end of a whole lot of adjectives and verbs. When you find out there are no snacks left at the Halloween party you can say “è sǐ wǒ le!” (hungry to death) If your mate eats too much curry and lets one rip you could also say chòu sǐ wǒ le! (stinks to death!)

Chinese people don’t really celebrate Halloween but we found a few who were westernised enough to make the effort and dress up. Here we asked them, and the odd westerner, to describe how they’re feeling using “sǐ wǒ le”