抽象chōu xiàng

Absurd (literally “abstract”)

tài chōu xiàng le!太抽象了！That’s so absurd!

抽象 is the normal word for “abstract”. Online it means “absurd”: so strange or random that it stops making sense, and often funny because of that.

Took off: 2024
Started in: A game streamer’s catchphrase
Today: Current

What it means

In a textbook, 抽象 is the opposite of 具体, “concrete”, and 抽象画 is an abstract painting. Online you say 太抽象了 about a video, a person or a piece of news that you cannot follow with normal logic.

搞抽象 means “to do absurd stuff on purpose”: weird edits, nonsense comments, jokes that only work because they make no sense.

How people use it

It is current and very common. It can describe a thing (这个视频好抽象), a person (你好抽象啊, a gentle tease) or a whole mood. A close word is 逆天, “outrageous”, which sounds more annoyed.

In serious writing 抽象 still means “abstract”, as in 抽象的概念, “an abstract idea”.

里昂

楼下有个大哥在遛乌龟
lóu xià yǒu gè dà gē zài liù wū guī
There’s a guy downstairs walking a turtle.
用绳子？
yòng shéng zi?
On a leash?
对，乌龟走得比他还快
duì, wū guī zǒu de bǐ tā hái kuài
Yep. The turtle is faster than him.
好抽象，我马上下楼看
hǎo chōu xiàng, wǒ mǎ shàng xià lóu kàn
That’s so random. I’m coming down to see.

More examples

他穿着睡衣去面试，太抽象了。
tā chuān zhe shuì yī qù miàn shì, tài chōu xiàng le.
He went to a job interview in pajamas. So absurd.
我们群里每天都在搞抽象。
wǒ men qún lǐ měi tiān dōu zài gǎo chōu xiàng.
Our group chat is pure nonsense every day.

Where it came from

Shanghai’s 语言文字周报 put 搞抽象 on its list of the ten internet phrases of 2024. It says the word started as a game streamer’s catchphrase, 真是太抽象了, “this is so abstract”. Jiemian places that stream on the game site Douyu, about ten years before 2024.

2024 was its biggest year. In December Xiaohongshu named 抽象 its keyword of the year: the app counted more than 10 million notes about it, and more than 160 million comments with 搞抽象, 102 times as many as the year before. By November, Douyin’s 抽象 topic had 63.3 billion views, Jiemian reported.