Chinese Chengyu Dictionary
A dictionary of chengyu, the four-character Chinese idioms. Search by expression, character or pinyin.
坐山观虎斗
Lit. sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight (idiom); fig. watch in safety whilst others fight then reap the rewards when both sides are exhausted
Search by Chinese expression, character or pinyin.
The most frequent idioms are also on a separate dictionary page.
12,999 chengyu listed.
What a chengyu is, and what it is not
A chengyu is almost always four characters long, and it is not a proverb. It is a compressed classical phrase that Chinese still uses in ordinary speech and writing: the characters keep an old order and an old meaning, and unpacking them word by word will not give you the sense. That is why looking one up is a different job from looking up a word.
This tool searches the table of idioms by expression, character or pinyin. If you already have the four characters in front of you, that is the way in. If you do not, and you want to see which idioms are common enough to be worth knowing first, the browseable list is the other half of the same subject.