高谈阔论

Pronunciation: gāo tán kuò lùn Literal meaning: Lofty talk, expansive discussion

Origin & Usage

Lofty (高) talk (谈) and expansive (阔) discussion (论). The two halves both describe scale — the altitude of the subject and the breadth of the sweep — and neither mentions substance, which is the joke. The phrase can occasionally be neutral, but in practice it is almost always dismissive: it describes the person who addresses the largest available questions at length, generally in a setting where a smaller and more answerable one was on the table.

Examples

English: "At the conference, he engaged in lofty discussions about philosophy and ethics."

Chinese: 在会议上，他高谈阔论关于哲学和伦理的问题。