shengnan

English

Etymology

From Mandarin 剩男 (shèngnán).

Noun

shengnan (uncountable)

1. (China) A man who has for an extended amount of time been unable to find a romantic, interpersonal or physically intimate relationship.
   • 2013 March 9, Brook Larmer, “The Price of Marriage in China”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     The marriage candidates on offer in the parks, she discovered, were often a mismatch of shengnu ("leftover women") and shengnan ("leftover men"), two groups from opposite ends of the social scale.

   • 2015 September 2, Venus Wong, “Inside China's Open-Air Marriage Market For "Leftover Women"”, in Refinery29‎^[2], retrieved 2019-10-29:

     These men have their own unflattering nickname — shengnan, or "leftover men."