Green Flame Upside the Head!
A Yunnanese expression that means to be extremely angry. It was explained to me as someone being so outraged that green flames start shooting around their head.
鬼火绿 literally “ghost fire green”
gui1 huo4 lu4 1
You can also separate it:
鬼火一头就绿起来的
gui1 huo4 yi4 tow4 jiu4 lu4 qi3 lair4 de3 2
Example sentence:
那个崴人做点事雀神怪鸟呢, 我鬼火太绿啦。
ner4 ge4 wey1 ren4 zuo4 dier3 si4 chuo1 shen1 guai3 niao4 ne, wo4 gui1 huo4 tair4 lu4 la.
Literally: That twisted person does things in a “sparrow spirit strange bird” way, it makes my ghost flames too green.
English: That sketchy bloke does everything so half-arsed, it pisses me off no end.
In Mandarin, 鬼火 gui3 huo3 means “will-o-the-wisp”, green ethereal fires that appear at night, especially around graves, said to be lit by ghosts. It is unrelated to the above expression. If you wanted to convey the “ghost fire green” anger in Mandarin, the usual equivalent is pedestrian expressions like 愤怒 (fen4 nu4) or just 非常生气 (fei1 chang2 sheng1 qi4). There is however this one that I’ve mentioned before:
七窍生烟
qi1 qiao4 sheng1 yan1
Which means “[so angry that] smoke shoots from every orifice of the head”
- Note that confusingly in Yunnanese green is pronounced like road (“lu”), with the “oo” at the back of the throat, which is different to Mandarin with the “oo” (lv, officially u with an umlaut) at the front of the mouth.
- In the above sentence, the “的” de is the dialect pronunciation of “了” (past tense particle).
