Chinese in Focus

"Gelivable" means something is cool or supportive. And "ungelivable" means just the opposite. 

 

"Gelivable" comes from 给力 (gěilì).  It used to be a regional idiom meaning something is cool or supportive. "给" (gěi) means "to give" or "to be given"; "力" (lì) means "ability", "power" or "force". So together they mean "to give force (to)", "be capable of".  For example, when you are downloading at a speed of 1 TB/s, it is very "给力" (gěilì). 

 

Recently the word "给力" quickly spread out across China, probably because of a dubbing of a Japanese animation that is very popular. So "给力" is now everywhere.  

Some people translated it into English.  Since "geili" sounds like "geli" with the "e" reduced to schwa, they invented the word "geli." Chinese words do not have change depending on their function in the sentence, so when translating it into English, they created "gelivable" and the noun "gelivability". After them, there came "ungelivable" and "ungelivability".　　

 

 

Sentence：哥，你实在太给力了(gē nǐ shízài tài gěilì le)。

(Buddy, you’re so gelivable!)