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This category is for Chinese idioms for which there is an English equivalent (in terms of connotation). Pages in category "Chinese idioms with an English equivalent" This category contains only the following page.
Idioms are such an important part of Chinese popular culture that there is a game called 成語接龍 'connect the chengyu' that involves someone calling out an idiom, with someone else then being supposed to think of another idiom to link up with the first one, so that the last character of the first idiom is the same as the first character of ...
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
eager or intent on, example: he is keen to get to work on time. desirable or just right, example: "peachy keen" – "That's a pretty keen outfit you're wearing." (slang going out of common usage) keeper a curator or a goalkeeper: one that keeps (as a gamekeeper or a warden) a type of play in American football ("Quarterback keeper")
Words of Chinese origin have entered European languages, including English. Most of these were direct loanwords from various varieties of Chinese.However, Chinese words have also entered indirectly via other languages, particularly Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, that have all used Chinese characters at some point and contain a large number of Chinese loanwords.
Chinaman's chance is an American idiom which means that a person has little or no chance at success, synonymous with similar idioms of improbability such as a snowball's chance in hell or when pigs fly. Although the origin of the phrase is unclear, it may refer to the historical misfortunes which were suffered by Chinese-American immigrants.
Many Chinese proverbs (yànyǔ 諺語) [1] exist, some of which have entered English in forms that are of varying degrees of faithfulness. A notable example is "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", from the Dao De Jing, ascribed to Laozi. [2]
Download as PDF; Printable version; In other projects Wiktionary; ... Pages in category "Chinese-language idioms" This category contains only the following page.