Verbing for the Summer
Summer is over, but I can’t help sharing this 一下 / 一夏 pun:
It reads:
喝一夏，冰一夏
The “喝一夏” part is punning on a very common use of 一下 after a verb, whereas the “冰一夏” part is punning on the same usage in a less typical way.
An uninspired translation would be, “have a drink and cool off.” (Sorry, I have no inspired translation!)
Drink all summer for a summer long cool
Not bad… This is the tricky part: the contradiction between the sound of 一下, which is usually brief, and the characters 一夏, which can mean “all summer”, similar to what you can indicate with 一天 or 一年.
This is the complexity I was avoiding in the name of a quick post. 🙂
take a sip, all summer long,
cool down a while, all summer long?