What is an idiom

Idioms are stereotypes in Chinese vocabulary. Idioms, everyone says they have become words, and so do idioms. Idioms are mostly four-character, and some are three-character, five-character or even more than seven-character.

Idiom is a major feature of traditional culture in China, which has a fixed structure and a fixed sentence, indicating a certain meaning. It is applied to a sentence as a whole, with subject, object, attribute and other components.

A large part of idioms are passed down from ancient times and represent a story or allusion. Some idioms are just a miniature sentence. Idiom is a ready-made word, similar to idioms and proverbs, but slightly different.

Most of them are composed of fixed words of general concepts, such as "castle in the air", "famous", "shining on you", "colorful" and "beaming" are all four-character idioms. Idioms with less than four words, such as "knocking at the door", "unwarranted" and "taken for granted".

The origin of idioms:

There are more than 50,000 idioms, 96% of which are four-character, and there are also idioms with three characters, five characters, six characters and seven characters or more. Such as "pot calling the kettle black", "Shut the door", "reinvent the wheel", "haste makes waste" and "drunkenness is not about wine". Idioms generally use four words, probably because they are easy to grasp.

For example, China's ancient poetry collection "The Book of Songs" consists of four sentences, and the ancient history "Shangshu" also has some four sentences. Later, I began to read San Zi Jing, Hundred Family Names and Ganzi Wen, the last two of which are all four sentences. The first, second and third episodes of Four-eyed Miscellaneous Son and Long Wen Whip Shadow are all four words.

Although this is a sermon, it shows that these four words are loved and recited by people. Some words of the ancients could have been aphorisms and idioms. Just because it was more troublesome to change it to four words, I had to give it up and use it as a guide.

For example, The Story of Fan Zhongyan's Yueyang Tower in the Song Dynasty has a good meaning, which means "Worry about the world first, and enjoy the world later". However, due to the large number of words, idioms cannot be formed. We can only regard it as an epigram, and sometimes we can introduce it into the article.

However, if "no pains come", it is easy to say and remember, so it can become an idiom. The phrase "all wastes flourish" in Yueyang Tower is an idiom, because it is four words.