Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

grass mud horse

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.88 in modern English

Syllables: grass -mud horse
IPA

20

Scrabble Score

13

Letters

2

Syllables

10

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

One of the ten "mythical Baidu deities" invented by Chinese internet users for the purpose of circumventing censorship. Usually depicted as resembling an alpaca, and is supposedly living in the Mahler Gobi desert.

Example Sentences

"What began as an entertaining by-product of that internet clean-up has become a sensation. This is because “Grass Mud Horse” in Chinese is a homonym for an unprintable but widely used phrase. Both the phrase – “F*** your mother” – and the name of the mythical animal are pronounced as caonima, although using different tones"
"A YouTube children’s song about the beast has drawn nearly 1.4 million viewers. A grass-mud horse cartoon has logged a quarter million more views. A nature documentary on its habits attracted 180,000 more."

Etymology

A calque of the Mandarin 草泥馬／草泥马 (cǎonímǎ). See 草泥馬 for more.

Word Breakdown

Root: -

Inflected Forms

grass mud horses (plural) grass-mud horse (alternative)

Questions

What does grass mud horse mean?: One of the ten "mythical Baidu deities" invented by Chinese internet users for the purpose of circumventing censorship. Usually depicted as resembling an alpaca, and is supposedly living in the Mahler Gobi desert.
Where does grass mud horse come from?: A calque of the Mandarin 草泥馬／草泥马 (cǎonímǎ). See 草泥馬 for more.

How to pronounce grass mud horse

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “grass mud horse”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “grass mud horse”.
Repeat and practice — Say “grass mud horse” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.