Chéngyǔ are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four characters. Chengyu were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in Vernacular Chinese writing and Spoken Chinese today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over 20,000.

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  • Chéngyǔ are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four characters. Chengyu were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in Vernacular Chinese writing and Spoken Chinese today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over 20,000. They are often referred to as Chinese idioms or four-character idioms; however, they are not the only idioms in Chinese. Chengyu are mostly derived from ancient literature. The meaning of a chengyu usually surpasses the sum of the meanings carried by the four characters, as chengyu are often intimately linked with the myth, story or historical fact from which they were derived. As such, chengyu do not follow the usual grammatical structure and syntax of the modern Chinese spoken language, and are instead highly compact and synthetic. Chengyu in isolation are often unintelligible to modern Chinese, and when students in China learn chengyu in school as part of the Classical curriculum, they also need to study the context from which the chengyu was born. Often the four characters reflect the moral behind the story rather than the story itself. For example, the phrase "破釜沉舟" literally means "break the woks and sink the boats."It was based on a historical account where General Xiang Yu ordered his troops to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" policy. Similar phrases are known in the West, such as "burning bridges" or "Crossing the Rubicon". This particular idiom cannot be used in a losing scenario because the story behind it does not describe a failure. Another example is "" which literally means melon field, under the plums. It is an idiom that has a deeper meaning that implies suspicious situations. It is derived from an excerpt from a poem from the Han Dynasty. The poem contains two phrases "瓜田不納履，李下不整冠" which describe a code of conduct that says "Don't adjust your shoes in a melon field and don't tidy your hat under the plum trees" in order to avoid suspicion of stealing. The literal meaning of the idiom is impossible to understand without the background knowledge of the origin of the phrase. However, some idioms such as "空穴來風" which means to lay one's self open to criticism, and "素面朝天" are so widely misunderstood that their literal meaning are used despite their original meaning. However, that is not to say that all chengyu are born of an oft-told fable; indeed, chengyu which are free of metaphorical nuances pervade amidst the otherwise contextually-driven aspect of vernacular Chinese. An example of this is 言而無信, which refers to an individual who cannot be trusted despite what he says, or essentially a deceitful person. The idiom itself is not derived from a specific occurrence from which a moral may be explicitly drawn; instead, it is succinct in its original meaning and would likely be intelligible to an individual learned in formal written Chinese. Note that the only classical-vernacular discrepancy present in this chengyu lies in the fact that the character 言 (yán) is no longer used as a verb in modern Chinese. (en)
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  • Chéngyǔ are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four characters. Chengyu were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in Vernacular Chinese writing and Spoken Chinese today. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in the Chinese language, though some dictionaries list over 20,000. (en)
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  • Chengyu (en)
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