Gung Ho!

If you've ever been chastised for being gung ho, then someone thought you were overzealous.

But did you know that the original Chinese phrase, a slogan of the Communist Party of China's Eighth Route Army in World War II, means something else altogether? In Mandarin Chinese, gong he (工合) is the concept of a collective effort toward a particular goal; in other words, to "work together".

The primary definition of gong (gung in Cantonese) is labour, and its subsequent definitions are related to work. But he (hahp in Cantonese; often rendered in North American Chinatown signs as "hop") has shades of meaning: it can mean to combine, unite, gather or collect.

Under Communist ideals, working together means much more than a mere labour collective. Funny then that the phrase entered the English language via the United States Marine Corps, courtesy of Major Evans F. Carlson, who saw in the slogan the "spirit of cooperation", an opportunity for soldiers to discipline themselves and shed their individualism so that by working together they could inflict greater damage upon the enemy.

The phrase further worked its way into the American lexicon thanks to its use as the title of a 1943 war film. Yet somehow over time its meaning was corrupted: instead of being used to congratulate someone for the willingness to "work together", gung ho is now a derisive comment, often used by someone who feels threatened by a coworker's excessive enthusiasm.

So the next time a colleague calls you gung ho, remember the original Chinese meaning and thank him for the compliment.

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