Comment by ssnistfajen
4 years ago
An old one but possibly the earliest and most prominent of obsolete Chinese characters being imbued with new (Internet-based) meanings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiong
There's also 奭 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A5%AD which is occasionally used as a censorship workaround to mock one of Xi Jinping's gaffes in an early 2000's TV interview where he bluffed about being able to carry two hundred "catty" (~100kg)'s worth of wheat on rural mountain roads. The character is composed of two 百 ("hundred") and one 人 ("human/person/people") which is a pitoral euphemism to that line he said on TV. I can't find any sources about this one that's in English so please bear with my half-assed explanation.
Both cases are fascinating, thank you!! Side note: of course 奭 is pronounced shi. I only know a bare minimum about Chinese but when in doubt: it's pronounced "shi" (with some license regarding tone). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...