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I've heard this a couple times now and most recently in a movie "钢的琴". It's an idiom that means "cut me some slack"; "let me off the hook". I couldn't make sense of the Baidu encyclopedia so I'm asking here.

杨以轩
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tao
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  • You meant 放我一码 surely?... I can explain its literal meaning, but I am not sure about its cultural origin. It might have something to do with kites. – deutschZuid Feb 14 '13 at 05:30

1 Answers1

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It should be 放我一马. 马 here refers to the rider rather than the horse itself. It's from 三国演义.

出自三国演义。赤壁之战，曹操大败，欲从华容道逃走，被关羽逮个正着，立马堵住去路。关羽念及往日旧恩，让开马位，使曹操得以逃脱。“放你一马”，比喻手下留情。即出于此。

Source: http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/2156078.html

English version of the story (wikipedia)

NS.X.
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  • That makes sense, although I am seeing a lot of 放我一码 on the net. Could be a misspelling that has become an alternative form? – deutschZuid Feb 14 '13 at 07:18
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    @JamesJiao I've seen it as an (not so popular) BBS meme which means either "don't delete my post" or "please share invitation code/coupon code/BT torrent". 码 means bits/bytes, extended from literal meaning 'encoding', in both cases. – NS.X. Feb 14 '13 at 07:35
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    Another explanation: (Don't delete my post) there's an expression called "码字/碼字" which means "to type, to write an post or sth to be on Internet". A shorter form is "码/碼"; (Give me invitation code) "码/碼" just means code. – Mike Manilone Feb 14 '13 at 20:58
  • @MikeManilone Yes it's very possible. In 码字, 码 means (re)arrange. – NS.X. Feb 14 '13 at 21:09
  • @NS.X. Thanks for the answer but I'm sorry you didn't try harder. See I already tried to make sense of Baidu encyclopedia and couldn't. My 三国 vocab isn't too good. Basically someone (CaoCao?/Guanyu?) escaped a battle on a horse? – tao Feb 16 '13 at 05:25
  • @tao Though it's originated from 三国, there is nothing metaphoric or symbolic to further elaborate on. 放我一马 literally means 'let go my ride'. – NS.X. Feb 16 '13 at 08:40
  • @tao And you could try harder to find the related story in English. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictitious_stories_in_Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms#Guan_Yu_releases_Cao_Cao_at_Huarong_Trail – NS.X. Feb 16 '13 at 08:52
  • @NS.X. Thank you. There is a lot of 三国 information in English as well. Only having some names of places/people wasn't enough to find the English equivilent, or perhaps I was looking in the wrong places. A readable English translation of your post would have been enough. I simply am not that good in characters – tao Feb 18 '13 at 16:22
  • @tao and NS.X. I think you guys are being too hard on tao. I had to read the story in order to understand it. The meaning of "让开马位" wasn't really clear to me from "放你一马". – Stumpy Joe Pete Feb 18 '13 at 23:50
  • @StumpyJoePete I am sorry about that. As a native speaker sometimes I'm unable to locate the very spot that a language learner may have difficulty with. Specific to this question, I falsely assumed it's the misspelling in the original title that puzzled OP and what he needed was just the correct spelling. Shouldn't have made that assumption. – NS.X. Feb 19 '13 at 01:58