好家伙hǎo jiā huo

Wow, good grief

hǎo jiā huo!好家伙！Good grief!

好家伙 means “wow” or “good grief”. You say it when something surprises you, usually something absurd, too big or too much.

Took off: 2020
Started in: Crosstalk comedy
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

Word for word it means “good fellow”: 家伙 is a casual word for a guy or a thing. As an exclamation it does not refer to anyone. It shows surprise, good or bad, and often a little sarcasm.

How people use it

It is everyday Chinese now. People often double it for effect: 好家伙，我直呼好家伙, roughly “wow, I’m just … wow”.

The tone matters. Said flat, about a friend who ate a whole cake, it means “nice going”.

亮亮

我刚跑完了一个全马
wǒ gāng pǎo wán le yí gè quán mǎ
I just finished a full marathon.
好家伙，四十二公里？
hǎo jiā huo, sì shí èr gōng lǐ?
Whoa, 42 kilometers?
对，跑了五个小时
duì, pǎo le wǔ gè xiǎo shí
Yep. It took me five hours.
我走五公里都累
wǒ zǒu wǔ gōng lǐ dōu lèi
I get tired walking five.

More examples

好家伙，一杯咖啡要八十块？
hǎo jiā huo, yì bēi kā fēi yào bā shí kuài?
Good grief, eighty yuan for a coffee?
好家伙，他一个人吃了三碗面。
hǎo jiā huo, tā yí gè rén chī le sān wǎn miàn.
Wow, he ate three bowls of noodles by himself.

Where it came from

好家伙 is not new. The China News Service calls it an old northern exclamation that 相声, crosstalk comedy, made well known. Online, people began to put it in front of a complaint or a surprise to make it stronger.

By 2020 it was one of the most used words online. That December the national language monitoring center put 好家伙 seventh on its list of the internet words of the year.