一言不合就yì yán bù hé jiù

Out of nowhere, …

yì yán bù hé jiù chàng gē.一言不合就唱歌。Bursts into song out of nowhere.

一言不合就 is a template: “the moment we disagree, (someone) does …”. The joke is that nothing went wrong. Someone just does something sudden.

Took off: 2016
Started in: Gaming comment threads
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

一言不合 is an older phrase: “to fall out over a word”. In the meme, that meaning is gone. 一言不合就 + verb now means “suddenly”, “on a whim” or “at every chance”.

So 一言不合就唱歌 is someone who bursts into song for no reason.

How people use it

It is common, if a little dated. You see it in headlines and comments: 一言不合就放假, “a day off out of nowhere”, or 一言不合就涨价, “prices up again, just like that”.

里昂

我家楼下的奶茶店又关门了
wǒ jiā lóu xià de nǎi chá diàn yòu guān mén le
The milk tea shop downstairs closed again.
怎么又关了？
zěn me yòu guān le?
Closed again? Why?
对啊，它一言不合就关门
duì a, tā yì yán bù hé jiù guān mén
Yep. It just shuts whenever it feels like it.
太随便了吧
tài suí biàn le ba
That’s so random.

More examples

我家的猫一言不合就跳到桌子上。
wǒ jiā de māo yì yán bù hé jiù tiào dào zhuō zi shang.
My cat jumps on the table out of nowhere.
他一言不合就请大家吃饭，太大方了。
tā yì yán bù hé jiù qǐng dà jiā chī fàn, tài dà fang le.
He treats everyone to dinner at the drop of a hat. So generous.

Where it came from

咬文嚼字 tied the meme to online comments about a badly run world esports tournament at the end of 2015. As the template spread to every kind of action, it lost its logic.

The magazine put 一言不合就 on its list of the words of 2016.