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Based on Chinese news articles and corpus data, this study examines the pragmatic usage of ouni, derived from the Korean word unni, and explores how its meaning differs from the original Korean term. Since its first appearance in Chinese media in 2012, ouni has undergone a notable expansion in its referential scope. Initially, ouni referred to female celebrities from Korea and China, however, gradually its usage expanded to include ordinary women. This broadening of referents reflects a shift in honorific usage among Chinese speakers, particularly among young women, for whom ouni is an affectionate and familiar way of addressing women older than themselves. In Chinese language, attributive modifiers describe characteristics such as nature, state, affiliation, and category. These modifiers serve to highlight the unique features of ouni and help differentiate its various uses. The most frequently used modifiers are first- and second-person pronouns, which often precede ouni to express positive emotional attachment to the referent. Descriptive modifiers reveal physical attributes such as “long legs,” whereas distinguishing modifiers are often occupational, forming expressions such as “profession + ouni” to endearingly refer to women in specific fields. Moreover, geographical modifiers such as China, Shanghai, and Korea are commonly used to further contextualize the term. Ouni presents an exceptional case, unlike most phonetic loanwords in Chinese, which are often replaced by semantic translations or by forms that combine both phonetic and semantic elements and whose original phonetic versions indicate a marked decline in usage over time. Ouni has developed into a familiar form of address among young Chinese women, often substituting jiejie (older sister), and illustrates a rare phenomenon in the adoption of foreign words in Chinese vocabulary.