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人球

Mandarin · pinyin rén qiú

person who is passed back and forth, with nobody willing to look after them (e.g. a child of divorced parents)
(esp.) patient who gets shuttled from hospital to hospital, each of which refuses to admit the patient for treatment

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Characters in this entry

人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
球: qiú · ball, sphere, globe; round

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–2 · ren2 qiu2

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

noun

(especially Taiwan) somebody whom no one is willing to take care of or take in (i.e. like a ball that is kicked around); (medicine) rejected patient (Classifier: 顆／颗 m)

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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