牛马niú mǎ

Workhorse (literally “oxen and horses”)

zǎo shang hǎo, niú mǎ men.早上好，牛马们。Good morning, fellow workhorses.

牛马 means a worker who toils like a beast of burden for little pay. Young people say it about themselves with a shrug, and it has largely taken over from 打工人.

Took off: 2024
Started in: Workplace jokes online
Today: Current

What it means

牛 is an ox or a cow and 马 is a horse, the animals that pull and carry. The word draws on the old saying 做牛做马, “to work like an ox or a horse”, which means to slave away for someone.

Said about yourself, it is dark humor about long hours, a boss and a salary that never goes up. Said to someone else, it can be a real insult.

How people use it

It is current and very common, in office group chats, in posts about overtime and on Monday mornings. 牛马文学, “workhorse literature”, is the name for posts written in this tired, joking voice.

亮亮

周六出来吃火锅吗？
zhōu liù chū lai chī huǒ guō ma?
Hotpot on Saturday?
去不了，老板让我周六也上班
qù bu liǎo, lǎo bǎn ràng wǒ zhōu liù yě shàng bān
Can’t. My boss wants me at work on Saturday too.
好惨，真是牛马
hǎo cǎn, zhēn shì niú mǎ
Ouch. A true workhorse.
牛马也要吃火锅，周日吧！
niú mǎ yě yào chī huǒ guō, zhōu rì ba!
Workhorses need hotpot too. Sunday!

More examples

又加班到十点，牛马的命。
yòu jiā bān dào shí diǎn, niú mǎ de mìng.
Overtime till ten again. That’s a workhorse’s life.
周一了，牛马们又要上班了。
zhōu yī le, niú mǎ men yòu yào shàng bān le.
It’s Monday, and the workhorses have to go to work again.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 牛马 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

Andrew Methven of RealTime Mandarin dates the slang to 2021. It follows 打工人, “working person”, and 社畜, “company livestock”. It grew through 2024, and in December 2024 he named it the Sinica Podcast’s phrase of the year.

Dao Insights wrote in June 2025 that 牛马 had started to replace 打工人 as the general word for a worker. It belongs with other self-mocking animals of the office: 吗喽, the monkey, and 鼠鼠, the little mouse.