自相矛盾

Pronunciation: zì xiāng máo dùn Literal meaning: Spear shield contradict self

Origin & Usage

Han Feizi tells of a man of Chu selling weapons who said of his shields that nothing could pierce them, and of his spears that there was nothing they could not pierce. A bystander asked what would happen if one of his spears were used against one of his shields, and he had no answer. Hence spear (矛) against shield (盾) as self (自) contradiction (相) — and the two characters together, 矛盾, became the ordinary modern Chinese word for a contradiction, which is unusual for an idiom's components.

Examples

English: "The policy's conflicting requirements made implementation impossible"

Chinese: 政策中相互矛盾的要求使得实施变得不可能