In "A Dream of Red Mansions", why do the maids call each other "Little Hoof"?

Don’t think that the daughters of Yingying Yanyan in the Grand View Garden in "Dream of Red Mansions" are all civilized. They usually speak dirty words, and swearing is as cheap as pouring beans from their pockets. Not only the low-status maids like Qingwen and Yuanyang "raised their eyes and cursed" from time to time, but even the high-status "Rose with Thorns" Miss Tanchun and the rosy-faced second mistress Wang Xifeng also spit out a lot of words from time to time. There are a lot of swear words, and even the kind and kind ancestor Jia Mu will inadvertently slip out a few dirty words in her elegant conversation.

There are all kinds of curse words in "A Dream of Red Mansions", almost everything you want. It can be said to be an encyclopedia of swear words. If someone asks what is the most frequent curse word in the book, although the author has not made detailed statistics, I will tell you without hesitation: it is the phrase "little hoof" that almost every woman never leaves her lips! Grand View Garden is a country of girls, so it is reasonable for women to use swear words more frequently. Jia Lian and Deng Girl had a cool time, hiding a lock of hair as a thought, but Ping'er dug it out.

Jia Lian was worried that the matter would be exposed, so he smiled and said: "Little hoof, if you don't take it out as soon as possible, I will break your arm." Ping'er said with a smile: "You just have no conscience. I concealed it with good intentions. Let him ask. You..." Mrs. Wang gave Baoyu maid Qiu Wen some old clothes. Qingwen looked down on her and said to Qiu Wen, "You gave the good ones to someone who has never seen the world! , I only gave you the rest, how shameless are you?" Qiu Wen said: "No matter who he gave it to, it belongs to the wife after all..." The precious jade was lost, and Xiren hid it as She Yue and others. To scare him from being naughty, he smiled at She Yue and others and said: "Little hooves, naughty people have a way to be naughty. Hiding this thing... I think someone must be pushing it."

The sisters were teasing Grandma Liu in the Grand View Garden. Mother Jia laughed and scolded: "You little hooves, you haven't picked up your hands yet, you just stand and laugh." While speaking, Grandma Liu had already gotten up, laughed herself, and said, "That's what I said. He hit me in the mouth..." Jia Mu said with a smile: "This must be the fault of Feng Yatou. Don't believe what he says." The above examples are enough. In "A Dream of Red Mansions", he scolded "little one." The words "hooves" are everywhere, and there is no need to enumerate them one by one. If readers are interested, they may wish to search for themselves in the book. There are also some variations of the curse word "little hoof" in the book. "Little hoof" is considered a more elegant scolding. Less elegant scoldings include "saucy hoof", "slutty hoof" and "romantic hoof". , "crooked hoof", "cheap hoof", "rotten hoof" and so on.

In fact, not only the book "A Dream of Red Mansions", the curse word "little hoof" seems to be often used in old books describing women's lives. We might as well give two examples. In the book "Jin Ping Mei", Mrs. Wang said to Da'an: "You are such a promiscuous whore. Don't say that I am your matchmaker. I have made a good family for you. Even if an idle person comes in, you should not be so careless." An said: "He and my brother-in-law were making a fuss at home, which almost made my aunt to death yesterday.

My brother-in-law has been sent away, and he is the only one. Now I will teach you how to lead it." "He's gone." Zhang Dai's book "Tao'an Dream Memories" in the early Qing Dynasty also recorded such a story: a family married a new bride, and the bride was too lazy to sleep in the morning. The family drove a parrot and shouted every morning: "Little hoof." , stinky whore, sleepy and shameless"! The bride was so ashamed and angry that she managed to poison the parrot to death with poison bait. Even parrots can say "little hoof" after imitating it, which shows that this curse word was widely circulated at that time.

In today’s curse words, whether in Mandarin or local dialects, there is no curse word "little hoof", so that in several versions of "A Dream of Red Mansions Dictionary", there is no reference to "little hoof". The explanation of "hooves" is unclear. Looking up the "Modern Chinese Dictionary", the entry for "Little Hoof" is just a meaningless explanation of "an old-time curse word for women". Where is "little hoof" a popular curse word? When did swearing become popular? What does it really mean? There is no authoritative explanation yet.