10 Chinese Idioms About Communication & Speaking

Talk endlessly; speak at great length

Literal: Surging waves never ceasing

滔滔 is the sound and motion of a river in flood; with 不绝, never (不) breaking off (绝), the phrase gives speech that same volume and the same refusal to stop. The water image does two things at once, praising the fluency and warning about the quantity, and which of the two is meant depends entirely on ...

Argue endlessly without resolution

Literal: Arguing without rest

To argue (争论) without (不) ceasing (休). This is a modern four-character phrase built on a productive pattern rather than a classical allusion: 不休 attaches to a verb to mean that the action will not stop, and it yields 喋喋不休 (chattering on and on) the same way it yields this. There is no story behind i...

Maintain absolute silence about sensitive matter

Literal: No concealment runs as deep

This comes from the Guliang Commentary, which says of a matter too grave to record plainly that there is nothing (莫) so deep (如深) as the concealment (讳) of it. The depth of the silence is itself the measure of what is being hidden, so the evasion becomes evidence. A conspicuous silence, where the re...

As everyone knows or is widely recognized

Literal: Everyone completely knows

What the many (众) all (周) know (所知). The phrase is doing rhetorical work rather than reporting a fact, which is worth noticing before using it: placing a claim inside 众所周知 asserts that it is settled and puts anyone who disagrees outside the group rather than inside the argument. Chinese official and...

Arrive at same point without coordination

Literal: Not arrange yet same

Without (不) having arranged it (约) yet (而) alike (同). The phrase describes convergence without communication — several people reaching the same conclusion or taking the same action independently — and Chinese finds this interesting rather than merely coincidental. Crowds arriving at the same moment,...

Continuously emerging in endless succession

Literal: Levels emerge without end

Layers (层) emerging (出) without (不) exhaustion (穷). The image is stratified — one thing appearing from behind another, repeatedly, with no visible end to the stack — which is more specific than simply 'many'. It is neutral about welcome. New technologies and new talent, and equally new problems and ...

Showing originality; unconventional

Literal: Bring forth a design of one's own mind

To bring out (出) something set apart (别) by one's own (心) cutting (裁). 裁 is the tailor's cut, laying the cloth out and deciding where the shears go, so the metaphor puts originality at the planning stage rather than in the execution. What is praised is the decision to lay the pattern out differently...

A promise once made must be kept

Literal: Once a word is spoken

Once (既) a word (一言) is out (出). The line is almost never left standing alone: 一言既出，驷马难追, once said, a team of four horses cannot catch it. The image is of speech travelling faster than the fastest thing available to chase it, so what the saying actually regulates is the moment before, not the momen...

Perfect execution without revision

Literal: Writing needing no corrections

The Book of Later Han says of Mi Heng that he took up the brush at a banquet and finished a long rhapsody on the spot — 文无加点, writing that took no added mark, the wording the modern 文不加点 slightly alters. The 点 is the dot a writer made to strike out an error, so the claim is that there were none to m...

The whole story; causes and effects

Literal: Ridge it comes from, stream it runs to

Both halves are technical terms from geomancy, and they are not the same kind of thing: 龙 is the rise and fall of a mountain range, and the 来龙 is its main peak, the height a site's energy is held to come down from; 脉 is the stream in the valley, and the 去脉 is its main channel, where the water goes. ...