硬核yìng hé

Hardcore

tài yìng hé le!太硬核了！So hardcore!

硬核 is a translation of the English “hardcore”. It means tough, serious and impressive: a hardcore gamer, a hardcore grandma, a hardcore plan.

Took off: 2019
Started in: English “hardcore”
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

硬 means “hard” and 核 means “core”, so the word copies the English one part by part. It praises something that goes all the way: real skill, real effort, no shortcuts.

It goes in front of a noun or after 很 or 太. 咬文嚼字 gives examples such as 硬核玩家, a hardcore gamer, and 硬核妈妈, a tough mom.

How people use it

硬核 is now ordinary Chinese and almost always praise. It fits people, games, workouts and plans, anything done the hard way.

里昂

你周末去哪了？
nǐ zhōu mò qù nǎ le?
Where did you go this weekend?
去爬山了，一天爬了两座山
qù pá shān le, yì tiān pá le liǎng zuò shān
Hiking. Two mountains in one day.
太硬核了吧！
tài yìng hé le ba!
That’s so hardcore!
下周要不要一起？
xià zhōu yào bu yào yì qǐ?
Want to come next week?
我还是算了，我的腿不同意
wǒ hái shì suàn le, wǒ de tuǐ bù tóng yì
I’ll pass. My legs say no.

More examples

她每天五点起床跑十公里，太硬核了。
tā měi tiān wǔ diǎn qǐ chuáng pǎo shí gōng lǐ, tài yìng hé le.
She gets up at five every day and runs ten kilometers. So hardcore.
这个游戏太难了，只适合硬核玩家。
zhè gè yóu xì tài nán le, zhǐ shì hé yìng hé wán jiā.
This game is too hard. It’s only for hardcore gamers.

Where it came from

咬文嚼字 says 硬核 first named a style of rap music with a strong, fast beat. It then meant things made for a core audience and hard to get into: a 硬核游戏 is a very hard game. Later it came to mean simply “very impressive” or “very tough”.

In early 2019 the film The Wandering Earth started a discussion about 硬核科幻, hard science fiction, and the word got even more popular. Sixth Tone adds a viral video from the same weeks, Where’s Peppa?, in which a grandfather in the countryside builds a “hardcore” Peppa Pig out of scrap metal.

That December, 咬文嚼字 put 硬核 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2019, and the national language monitoring center listed it too.