Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various Chinese martial arts, especially those forms in which sharp blows and kicks are applied to pressure points on the body of an opponent.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
Chinese martial art .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a Chinese martial art
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Mandarin gōngfu, skill, art, labor, from Middle Chinese kəwŋ fuə̆, cultivation of the spirit : kəwŋ, work, labor + fuə̆, to support, assist.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Based on the Wade-Giles romanization of the Chinese Mandarin 功夫 ("skill, or accomplishment") (Wade-Giles: kung1-fu, Pinyin: gōngfu, IPA: /kʊŋ˥˥fu/).
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Examples
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dinkum commented on the word kung fu
WORD: kung fu. Also spelled "kung-fu."
ETYMOLOGY, as reported by Wall Street Journal "Word on the Street" columnist Ben Zimmer:
' When Hong Kong media magnate Run Run Shaw died earlier this week at age 106, his obituaries credited the Shaw studio with popularizing the "kung fu" film genre, sparking a Western fascination with Chinese martial arts beginning in the late 1960s.
' Such Shaw productions as the 1972 classic "Five Fingers of Death" were indeed instrumental in making the craze for kung fu an international phenomenon. But the term "kung fu" had already been percolating in martial-arts circles for more than a decade, especially among Chinese transplants in the U.S.
' The Chinese term "gong fu" has a centuries-long history meaning "workmanship" or "skill gained through committed effort." "Kung fu" is a different rendering of the same word, using a transcription system developed by British Sinologists in the 19th century. The term first shows up in English-language accounts of China to refer to Taoist bodily exercises that were intended to control one's "qi," or vital energy.
' In the 20th century, Cantonese speakers in southern China and Hong Kong began using "gongfu" in the more specialized meaning of "martial arts" (typically known in Mandarin as "wushu"). Some of those Cantonese speakers brought the word to California. One student at a San Francisco club was James Yimm Lee, an American-born welder and Army vet. He began publishing books on martial arts that he distributed through mail order, starting in 1958 with "Fighting Arts of the Orient: Elemental Karate and Kung Fu."
' In 1962, he met another American-born Chinese martial-arts enthusiast 20 years his junior: Bruce Lee. No relation, the younger Lee was impressed by the elder Lee's books on kung fu, and a year later, Bruce Lee had published his own manual on "Chinese Gung Fu."
' It was the "kung fu" spelling that won out, however, in the small but growing martial-arts community in the U.S. Beginning in 1963, the word began popping up in the magazine Black Belt, though sometimes it was conflated with the more popular Japanese art of karate. In January 1965, the magazine ran a long feature on "the ancient Chinese fighting art of kung-fu."
' Soon, Bruce Lee would make kung fu glamorous, first in his role as Kato on "The Green Hornet" and then in his all-too-brief movie career in Hong Kong, where he signed up with the Shaw studio's rival, Golden Harvest.
' The explosion of interest in kung fu movies brought the term into America's living rooms in 1972, when David Carradine was tapped to play a Shaolin monk in the Wild West for a television series called appropriately "Kung Fu." Americans might have thought of the term as authentically Chinese, but it was a cross-cultural hybrid all along. '
--- 2014. BEN ZIMMER. Take Note, Grasshopper, of Kung Fu. The Wall Street Journal. Saturday/Sunday, January 11 - 12, 2014. (Page C4).
January 16, 2014