[diskcat]

>The ancient tradition of hoaxing and playing practical jokes on the first day of April has fallen victim to China’s crackdown.

Reading that the first time I thought 'hoaxing' was a chinese word.

How weird.

[DonHopkins]

You have a point -- hoaxing has a fishy smell. And playing looks like it could be a Chinese word too!

[1] xing: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrs...

[2] ying: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrs...

[laumars]

You cannot split "hoaxing" and "playing" up like that as "ing" is a suffix denoting tense with "hoax" and "play" being the verb.

A quick Google of "hoax" suggests it's possibly derived from the 17th century noun "hocus".

[DonHopkins]

It's not about the roots of the English words. The pun is that x and y are relatively uncommon letters in English, that when they appear before the "ing" suffix, it's easy to accidentally parse them as relatively common Chinese words.

The "xinger" is that "hoaxing" has a 腥: "fishy (smell)". ;) [1]

[1] http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/2962/

[laumars]

ah sorry. I mistook your e-mail to mean they would literally have originated from China. My apologies.