7 Chinese Idioms for New Baby — Perfect Congratulations Messages

Ruin by adding extras

Literal: Draw snake add feet

The Strategies of the Warring States tells of retainers given a single flagon of wine and agreeing that whoever finished drawing a snake first should drink it. The quickest man, seeing the others still working, began adding feet (添足) to his snake (画蛇) — at which the second man finished, took the fla...

Leniency encourages worse behavior

Literal: Indulgence nurtures evildoers

姑息 is indulgence of the temporary, accommodating kind — the Book of Rites contrasts loving someone with virtue against loving them with 姑息 — and the phrase adds what it produces: nurturing (养) what is corrupt (奸). The verb is the sharp part, since 养 is what you do deliberately to something you want ...

Overjoyed; pleasantly surprised

Literal: Joy exceeding expectations

Joy (喜) that comes out (出) beyond (外) what was being looked for (望). 望 is both hoping and the act of looking into the distance, so the phrase places the surprise precisely: the good thing arrived from outside the range the person had been scanning. Su Shi uses it writing to a friend after eight year...

Enjoyed by all; universally popular

Literal: Happy to hear delighted to see

Glad (喜) to hear (闻) it and pleased (乐) to see (见) it. The two verbs cover the channels an audience receives things through, which is why the phrase attaches so readily to performance and broadcasting. What it claims is not quality but reception — that people actually want the thing — and that makes...

Add to one's strength; become even more powerful

Literal: Like tiger adding wings

A tiger (虎) with wings (翼) added (添). The animal was already at the top of anything it might meet, so the addition is not making it competitive but removing the last constraint on it — what changes is not the tiger's strength but the ground it can now reach. In practice it is used of capable people ...

Be moody; have unpredictable emotions

Literal: Joy and anger without constancy

Joy (喜) and anger (怒) with no (无) regularity (常). 常 is the constant, what can be relied on to stay the same, so the complaint is not about strong feeling but about the absence of any rule connecting the feeling to its cause. That is what makes the phrase name a hazard rather than a personality: what...

Be beaming with joy

Literal: Happy smile, face opens up

Pleasure (喜) breaking into a smile (笑) and the face (颜) opening (开). 开 does the work — the metaphor treats a face at rest as closed and happiness as the thing that opens it — which is why the phrase names a change rather than a state. Chinese uses it at the moment somebody hears good news, and it is...