In 祝贺你喜得贵子, is 喜得 a typo?

Question

I came across this example sentence translation in Pleco:

祝贺你喜得贵子
Congratulations on your newborn baby!

I think 喜（得） may be a typo for the following reasons:

the English translation specifies that the baby is newborn. 喜 does not convey this information, but 新 does.
新的 could very easily be mistyped as 喜得

I believe the sentence should be:

祝贺你新的贵子！

Does this seem correct?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 23 '19 at 08:36

11

No, it isn't a typo.

喜得 roughly means obtained by good fortune, so 祝賀你喜得貴子 is a congratulatory message meaning something like congratulations on being blessed with a son.

answered Jan 23 '19 at 08:36

dROOOze

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score 6 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 23 '19 at 15:28

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In fact, 喜得貴子, 新得贵子 is a third party description.

喜得 actually means coincidentally. In some verbs, 喜 has nothing to do with the happiness, but coincident luck, i.e. 幸喜. Thus in a novel/essay, before 喜得貴子 context, it always meant the family has difficulty in getting children, i.e. 人丁单薄, 膝下犹虚.

However, over time, poorly literate media editors and movie script writers simply confused the meaning with happiness. That caused many people to start to misuse it.

Since traditional Chinese new born congratulations are gender discriminate, today, simply saying congratulations 恭喜 will do.

edited Jan 23 '19 at 15:28

Ringil

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answered Jan 23 '19 at 09:37

mootmoot

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喜 has nothing to do with the happiness The oldest quotations containing「喜」usually means happy. 《詩・鄭風・風雨》：「既見君子，云胡不喜？」. – dROOOze Jan 23 '19 at 09:45
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@ droooze I have mentioned in some verb. – mootmoot Jan 23 '19 at 09:46
Ah okay, I guess you mean in 喜得 and 幸喜. Thanks for clarifying. – dROOOze Jan 23 '19 at 09:51

In 祝贺你喜得贵子, is 喜得 a typo?

2 Answers2