显眼包

What does 显眼包 mean?

The parrot in the zoo that poses for every phone, the coworker who starts dancing at the annual party, the friend who turns up in the loudest outfit of the group: all of them are 显眼包. The word covers anyone, and sometimes anything, that grabs attention in a goofy, faintly embarrassing but endearing way. Online it runs from neutral to positive and is normally said with a laugh, and it travels well beyond people, since museums and brands have used it for artifacts and products with a quirky look. Self-application is common too, as in “I'm the 显眼包 of the group”.

Where does 显眼包 come from?

An older dialect word sits behind it, 现眼包, roughly “someone who makes a spectacle of themselves”, found in several northern and southwestern Chinese dialects and carrying a mildly negative edge. Livestreams and short videos popularized the softer spelling 显眼包 during 2023, and 《咬文嚼字》 (Yaowen Jiaozi) later filed it among its top ten of that year.

How to use 显眼包

• 他在年会上跳舞，真是个显眼包。
  Tā zài niánhuì shang tiàowǔ, zhēn shì gè xiǎn yǎn bāo.
  He danced at the company's annual party; what a show-off goofball.
• 这只鹦鹉是全动物园最大的显眼包。
  Zhè zhī yīngwǔ shì quán dòngwùyuán zuì dà de xiǎn yǎn bāo.
  This parrot is the biggest attention-seeker in the whole zoo.