坑爹
What a rip-off
坑爹啊！What a rip-off!
坑爹 literally means “to trap Dad”. You say it when something cheats you, lets you down or turns out much worse than promised.
- Took off
- 2011
- Started in
- Forums and games
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
坑 is a pit, and as a verb it means to trick someone into a loss. 爹 is a colloquial word for “dad”, and in this joke the dad is the speaker. So 坑爹 means “this cheats me”.
It works for a bad product, a hidden fee, a game update or a plot twist. 坑爹啊 is the exclamation. The plain word for cheating people is 坑人.
How people use it
坑爹 is still common, though a little loud. It is a complaint between friends; with your boss, say something plainer.
我买的游戏皮肤只能用七天
The game skin I bought only lasts seven days.
多少钱？
How much was it?六十八块
68 yuan.这也太坑爹了
What a rip-off.
More examples
这个充电器用了两天就坏了，太坑爹了。
This charger broke after two days. What a rip-off.
说好的免费，结果要付钱，坑爹啊！
They said it was free, then they wanted money. What a scam!
Where it came from
Where the word started is not clear. The China Project traces it to a dialect spoken in northern Jiangsu. Other accounts link it to online games or to a Chinese fan dub of a Japanese cartoon.
By 2011 it was everywhere. 咬文嚼字, a magazine about language use, put 坑爹 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2011, together with 亲 and 卖萌.
The original. There is no single image or clip: the word grew on forums and in games. The China Project explains it in English. The China Project
Related memes
Sources
- China News Service: the ten phrases of 2011 (in Chinese) (chinanews.com.cn)
- The China Project: phrase of the week, July 2022 (thechinaproject.com)
- Chinese Wikipedia: list of mainland internet slang (in Chinese) (zh.wikipedia.org)
Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. It is not the original meme image.
Ten Chinese memes
One Chinese internet meme every three days for a month: where it came from, what it means and how to use it.
