What does 'حيتان' mean in Egyptian Arabic?
حكاية يوسف الشريف مع دخول هندسة عين شمس
B2 Arabic listening practice · Egyptian Arabic · Picked for people who know more
حيتان (heetan) literally means whales, plural of حوت. In Egyptian Arabic it refers to the people who dominate a field: top students cramming into engineering, top-scoring kids on the ثانوية عامة (national high-school exam), top brokers in the stock market, top dealers on the streets. The metaphor is size: a حيتان takes up more water than everyone else.
In this clip, Egyptian actor Yousef El Sherif tells the story of declaring he wanted to study engineering at Ain Shams when his family thought he could barely pass: « يعني حيتان اللي يخشوا هندسة دول، فضحكوا » (the kind who get into engineering are حيتان, and they laughed). He locked himself in, studied like crazy (مطبّق), got in, then went on to mechanical-power engineering.
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Harder words in this video
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Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In Egyptian TV talk shows like صاحبة السعادة with Esaad Younis on DMC where actors recount their ثانوية عامة years
- ▸In Egyptian student-life dramas like الكبير قوي and الإنس والنمس aired on CBC and Al Hayat where حيتان characters dominate the classroom plot
- ▸In Egyptian financial coverage on Al-Mal and Mubasher Egypt when columnists call top stock-market players الحيتان
- ▸Among Egyptian families during تنسيق الجامعات (university placement) season when parents compare their kids to the local حيتان of the neighborhood school