Chinese Words That Conquered the English Dictionary

In 2018, a small announcement appeared on the Oxford English Dictionary’s website that caused a minor earthquake in the world of linguistics. Among the 1,400 new words added to the dictionary that quarter was a phrase that would have baffled Queen Victoria, confused Shakespeare, and possibly offended Dr. Johnson: add oil.

It was not a typo. The OED—the most authoritative dictionary of the English language, the same institution that had defined “nice” as “foolish” for two centuries—had officially recognized a direct translation of the Chinese cheer 加油 as standard English. The gatekeepers had opened the gates. And they had let in a phrase that, grammatically speaking, makes no sense at all.

The story of how Chinese words entered English dictionaries is not a story of gradual acceptance. It is a story of repeated surprise—moments when the English language, that supposedly rigid and rule-bound system, bent to accommodate something it could not explain away.

The Early Adopters: When Pidgin Became Permanent

The first Chinese words to enter major English dictionaries arrived quietly, almost by accident, in the late 19th century. They were not invited. They simply refused to leave.

Long time no see appeared in American English in the 1880s, brought by Chinese laborers who translated 好久不见 word for word. Grammatically, it was nonsense: no subject, no verb conjugation, no syntactic structure that any English textbook would recognize. And yet, by 1900, it was being used by native English speakers who had no idea it was Chinese. The dictionary editors faced a choice: exclude a phrase that millions of people were using, or bend their rules and admit it.

They bent. Long time no see entered the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid-20th century, classified as a “colloquial greeting.” It was the first major Chinglish phrase to achieve lexical legitimacy, and it established a precedent that would echo for decades: if enough people say something for long enough, even the OED will eventually agree that it exists.

No can do followed a similar path. A classic piece of historical pidgin English from the 1850s, it applied Chinese negation structure directly to English words. “No can do” is, by any standard analysis, a grammatical disaster. It lacks a subject. It places “no” before the modal verb instead of after it. It is everything that English grammar says a sentence should not be. And yet it entered the dictionary because it was useful, memorable, and stubbornly persistent. The OED does not admire grammar. It records usage.

The Cultural Borrowers: Words That Filled Gaps

The second wave of Chinese dictionary entries arrived not through immigrant laborers, but through cultural fascination. These were words that English needed but did not know it needed.

Kung fu entered English in the 1960s and 70s, riding the global explosion of Hong Kong cinema and the charisma of Bruce Lee. But its dictionary acceptance came slowly. The OED initially treated it as a foreign term, a curiosity from the martial arts world. It was only after decades of mainstream usage—after kung fu schools opened in suburban America, after video games named their fighting styles, after the phrase became a metaphor for any kind of dedicated skill—that the dictionary fully embraced it.

Feng shui and yin-yang followed similar trajectories. They entered English through the New Age and wellness movements of the 1980s and 90s, adopted by Western audiences seeking alternatives to Western rationalism. The dictionaries were skeptical at first. Feng shui was classified as a “pseudo-science” in some early references. Yin-yang was dismissed as pop philosophy. But usage overwhelmed judgment. By the 2000s, both words had secure places in major dictionaries, complete with etymologies tracing them back to ancient Chinese texts.

Guanxi took a different route. It entered business English in the 1990s, when Western corporations began operating in China and discovered that personal relationships were not a quaint cultural custom but a fundamental operating system. English had no equivalent concept—“networking” was too transactional, “connections” too vague, “corruption” too judgmental. Guanxi filled the gap, and business dictionaries rushed to include it.

What these words share is that they were not translated because English lacked a precise equivalent. They were adopted because English lacked a concept. The dictionary, in admitting them, was acknowledging that the world had changed and English had not kept up.

The Internet Insurgents: When Memes Became Words

The third wave arrived with the internet, and it moved faster than anything before it.

Add oil was the breakout star. The OED’s 2018 inclusion was notable not because the phrase was new—it had been used in Hong Kong and Singapore for decades—but because its inclusion signaled that a new kind of English was being born. Add oil was not pidgin. It was not a cultural borrowing from ancient philosophy. It was a modern, energetic cheer that had spread through Asian immigrant communities and social media into general usage. And the OED recognized it not as a regional curiosity, but as a standard informal expression.

The decision was controversial. Purists objected that “add oil” makes no grammatical sense. Critics argued that the OED was diluting its standards to chase trends. But the editors defended their choice with a simple argument: millions of English speakers use the phrase, understand its meaning, and feel no need to translate it. That is the only standard that ultimately matters.

Other internet-era Chinese phrases are currently knocking on the dictionary door. No zuo no die has been added to the Urban Dictionary and has appeared in mainstream American media. You can you up circulates on Reddit and Twitter. Smilence and niubility remain niche, but they are precisely where add oil was ten years ago: laughed at by some, used daily by others, and watched carefully by lexicographers.

The internet has accelerated the dictionary process from decades to years. A phrase can emerge on Weibo, spread to Twitter, appear in a New York Times article, and be shortlisted for dictionary inclusion—all within months. The gatekeepers have not disappeared, but the gates are wider than ever.

What Dictionary Inclusion Actually Means

There is a common misconception that entering the Oxford English Dictionary is like being knighted by the Queen—a formal recognition of excellence and propriety. It is not. The OED is a historical record, not an academy of good taste. Its editors do not ask whether a word is “good” English. They ask whether it is used English.

When add oil entered the OED, it did not become “correct” English. It had already been correct for the people using it. The dictionary merely caught up. This is an important distinction, because it reveals the true nature of linguistic authority: dictionaries do not create language. They describe it, always belatedly, always incompletely.

For Chinese words entering English dictionaries, this means something profound. The dictionary inclusion is not the destination. It is the postscript. The real story happens in the mouths of speakers, in the comment sections of social media, in the menus of restaurants, in the cheers of sports stadiums. Long time no see was English long before the OED said so. Add oil was English long before 2018.

The Future: What Gets In Next?

Predicting which Chinese words will enter English dictionaries next is a fool’s game, but certain patterns are clear. Words that fill a conceptual gap have the best chance: guanxi succeeded because English had no equivalent. Words that carry cultural energy have the next best chance: add oil succeeded because it was more vivid than “go for it.” Words that are merely humorous translations have the hardest path: people mountain people sea is beloved online but unlikely to achieve dictionary status because it is a joke, not a tool.

The most likely next candidate is baozi or bao, which is following the same trajectory as taco and sushi—a foreign food word that English speakers use without translation because the translation would be inadequate. When enough Americans say “let’s get bao” instead of “let’s get steamed buns,” the dictionary will notice.

Another strong candidate is qi or chi, which has already entered the vocabulary of wellness culture, martial arts, and alternative medicine. It lacks a precise English equivalent—“energy” is too vague, “life force” too mystical—and that gap gives it staying power.

What is certain is that the flow will not stop. As China’s cultural influence grows, as its diaspora communities expand, and as the internet dissolves the boundaries between languages, Chinese words will continue to enter English at an accelerating pace. The dictionary will follow, as it always does, a few years behind.

The Last Entry

The Oxford English Dictionary currently contains over 600,000 words. A handful of them are Chinese in origin. That handful is growing.

When add oil appeared in the OED, some commentators treated it as a novelty—a cute story about a funny phrase. But it was more than that. It was a signal that English, for all its historical arrogance, was still capable of surprise. A language that can absorb tea from Hokkien, ketchup from Fujian, and add oil from Hong Kong is a language that is still alive.

The dictionary, in the end, is just a book. The language is what people say. And people are saying more Chinese words than ever before.

Add oil, English. You’ve got a long way to go.