Four-character idiom
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Four-character idioms, or chéngyǔ (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: }}}, literally "to become (part of) the language") are widely used in 文言 Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today. Classical Chinese can be compared to the way Latin was used in the Western world in science until recently. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chengyu in Chinese, though some dictionaries list over 20,000.
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"
Another example is ""
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 言而无信 (pinyin: }, literally "speaks yet (is) without trust"), 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 (pinyin: }) is no longer used as a verb in modern Chinese.
Chinese examples
The following three examples show that the meaning of the idiom can be totally different by only changing one character.- center; font-size
- Usage/Moral: implies rapid progress; traveling a thousand miles in a day
- 三人成虎 (Three men make a tiger)
Japanese examples
Four-character idiom is a common technique to make a memorizable phrase or idiom. In Japanese, the term 四字熟語 (yojijukugo) (四字 yoji four Chinese characters + 熟語 jukugo idiom) itself is a four-character idiom. Many of these idioms were adopted from their Chinese counterparts and have the same or similar meaning as in Chinese. The term 故事成語 (koji historical + seigo idiom) is mainly used to describe idioms which are regarded as being Chinese or of Chinese origin, although not all kojiseigo are made up of four characters. Among the idioms are:- "As if there were nobody beside (you)."
- Usage/Moral: One has a very high and often misguided opinion of self and acts any way s/he wants that tend to cause trouble for others. It is rarely used positively.
- Source: The Biography of Xiè Shàng (謝尚), Volume 79, the Chronicle of Jìn.
- center; font-size
- Usage/Moral: The very beauties that nature holds.
- Source: The Spitz album with the same name.
See also
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