Shanghainese swear words, and how rude they are

The best-known Shanghainese swear word is 册那 (tshoh na), a vulgar exclamation along the lines of English f*ck!, shortened from an insult aimed at the listener's mother. Below it come the name-calling words: 赤佬 (tshah lau, originally "ghost", now a contemptible person), 瘪三 (pih sae, a down-and-out), and the gentler words for a fool — 戆大 (gaon du), 猪头三 (tsyu deu sae) and 寿头 (zeu deu). This page rates each one on a five-step scale, says where it comes from, and lists the things a learner should not say.

Updated 12 October 2026 · 7 min read

Every expression here is attested in at least one dictionary or reference listed under Sources; anything that could not be checked has been left out. There are no slurs on this page. Shanghainese, like every language, has words that insult people for where they come from, and they are not listed here.

How to read the scale

The ratings are built from how the dictionaries label each word, not from guesswork:

Everything below level 4 is name-calling rather than profanity in the English sense. The romanisation is the one this site uses throughout; the romanisation guide explains how to read it, and the pronunciation guide explains the sounds.

The list

The sections below go through them from the strongest down.

册那: the one actual swear word (level 5)

册那 (tshoh na) is a vulgar interjection in Wu Chinese, the branch of Chinese Shanghainese belongs to. Wiktionary records it as an abbreviated form of a longer phrase about the listener's mother, and treats 戳㑚 as the main spelling, with 册那 as a variant; 册那 is the spelling you will see most. It is said on its own, as an outburst of anger or frustration, which is why it translates as f*ck! or sh*t! rather than as an insult to anyone in particular.

Wikipedia's article on Mandarin profanity mentions it as "Shanghainese for 'f*ck', similar in usage to cào (肏) albeit less strong". That comparison is the useful one: it is softened by being abbreviated, but its origin is the most offensive category of insult in Chinese — the same article says Chinese profanity most commonly involves "scorn of the target's ancestors, especially their mother". It goes at the top of the scale for that reason. Recognise it; do not use it.

赤佬: the ghost that became an insult (level 4)

赤佬 (tshah lau) originally meant a ghost or a corpse. Its second sense, a contemptible person, is labelled vulgar and derogatory by Wiktionary, whose example sentence translates it with one of the strongest words English has. The Chinese Wikipedia article on Shanghainese adds the other way it is used: in a sentence, close to damn it, for running into a bad-luck person or thing — which is where the "ghost" meaning still shows.

Wiktionary lists 小赤佬, with 小 "small", among the words built on it. The slang guide covers how 赤佬 sounds between friends compared with strangers, so that is not repeated here.

瘪三 and 十三点: two insults with English in them (level 3)

Both are labelled derogatory, and English may be behind both of them — certainly the first, possibly the second.

• 瘪三 (pih sae) is, according to Wiktionary, borrowed from English beg sir, and first named the people who stole food in the British Concession. It now means a wretched-looking person who lives by begging or stealing, and by extension an idiot. It spread from Shanghainese into other kinds of Chinese through early-20th-century literature. The course's own word list gives it in a note under 瘪, "deflated", as "a Shanghai insult: a down-and-out".
• 十三点 (zeh sae tie) literally reads "thirteen o'clock". Wiktionary gives two stories for it: a clock striking thirteen when twelve is the most it should, or English society, after the "society girls" who were looked down on in the 1930s. It is labelled derogatory and usually applied to women — which is the reason to leave it alone.

How the English layer got into Shanghainese, from the docks to Pidgin English, is on the loanwords guide.

The fools: 猪头三, 戆大, 寿头 (levels 1–4)

These three all mean, roughly, idiot, and most of the time they are closer to numpty than to swearing.

• 猪头三 (tsyu deu sae), "pig's head three", is short for the longer phrase 猪头三牲. Wiktionary marks it vulgar but adds that it "may be endearing" — so it ranges from a friend teasing you to a real insult, depending entirely on who says it and how.
• 戆大 (gaon du) is the everyday word for an idiot. 戆 (gaon) means silly or stupid and 大 (du) "big". A folk story derives it from English gander; Wiktionary gives that story as folk etymology, not fact. Wiktionary's example is a scolding for carelessness: 侬哪能投五投六个啦？戆大！ — "How are you this careless? Idiot!"
• 寿头 (zeu deu) means a silly person, a fool. Wiktionary says it was originally Wu, and it is now heard in other kinds of Chinese too, Cantonese among them.

戆大 is common enough that it is in Verbavia's (our own course) Shanghainese word list, which notes that where Mandarin says 傻瓜, Shanghainese says 戆大. You can see where it falls in the most common Shanghainese words.

Milder ways to express it (level 1 and below)

Some exasperated things you will hear in Shanghai are not insults at all.

• 拎勿清 (lin veh tshin) means unable to understand, and so clueless, slow on the uptake. It is about someone failing to get it, and carries no vulgar label.
• 坏脱 (wa theh), "broken, gone wrong", said of 脑子 (nau tsy), the brain, is the Shanghainese behind the Mandarin internet joke 侬脑子瓦特了, "your brain's broken", which Wiktionary says the TV comedy iPartment made popular. 瓦特 is just the word watt, chosen because it sounds like 坏脱.
• 触霉头 (tshoh me deu) is a dialect verb meaning to have a stroke of bad luck. It is about luck, not aimed at a person.

What not to say

1. Don't use 帮帮忙 to ask for help. It looks like "please help", but in Shanghainese it has become almost entirely a way of saying give me a break — the slang guide has the details, and phrases for visitors has what to say instead.
2. Don't say 册那 at all. It is the one word on this page labelled vulgar and built on an insult to someone's mother.
3. Don't call a woman 十三点, even as a joke. Its history is a judgement about women.
4. Don't mix in Mandarin swearing. 他妈的 and 傻瓜 are Mandarin, and putting them in a Shanghainese sentence is the same mistake as saying 我不知道 for 我勿晓得: understood, and not Shanghainese. The bigger list of everyday words that differ is on Shanghainese vs Mandarin.
5. Don't take an insult list as a script. The words on this page are for recognising, not for producing — the same 猪头三 can be affection or contempt.

Where to start instead

The fastest way to understand what you overhear in Shanghai is the ordinary vocabulary, learned in order of frequency. The Shanghainese course is free on the web and works in any browser, including on a phone and teaches the most common words first, with the grammar explained in English. To see how many of the common words you already know, try the Shanghainese vocabulary test.

What Mandarin, English and six other languages say most on screen is counted in the most common swear word in each language.

Sources

• Wiktionary: 戳㑚 (and the variant 冊那) — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%88%B3%E3%91%9A and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%86%8A%E9%82%A3
• Wiktionary: 赤佬 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B5%A4%E4%BD%AC
• Wiktionary: 癟三 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%99%9F%E4%B8%89
• Wiktionary: 十三點 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%89%E9%BB%9E
• Wiktionary: 豬頭三 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%B1%AC%E9%A0%AD%E4%B8%89
• Wiktionary: 戇大 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%88%87%E5%A4%A7
• Wiktionary: 壽頭 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A3%BD%E9%A0%AD
• Wiktionary: 拎勿清 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%8B%8E%E5%8B%BF%E6%B8%85
• Wiktionary: 瓦特 (the Shanghainese slang sense, from 坏脱了) — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%93%A6%E7%89%B9
• Wiktionary: 觸霉頭 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%A7%B8%E9%9C%89%E9%A0%AD
• Wiktionary: 幫幫忙 — https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B9%AB%E5%B9%AB%E5%BF%99
• Victor Mair, "Shanghainese", Language Log (16 May 2013), on 帮帮忙 — https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4628
• Wikipedia: Mandarin Chinese profanity — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese_profanity
• Wikipedia (Chinese): 上海话, on 赤佬, 戆大 and 猪头三 — https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/上海话
• Readings and the notes on 戆大, 瘪 and 傻瓜: Verbavia's Shanghainese word list.