📖 Meaning
Cannot be enumerated one by one. It describes a quantity or variety so great that listing each item individually is impossible. Often used of countless things, cases, or instances.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase is traced to the Song dynasty scholar Wang Mao (王楙) and his work 'Yeke Congshu' (《野客丛书》, 'Book of the Rural Guest'), a compilation of scholarly notes on language, history, and folk sayings. In the entry titled 'Su Yu You Suo Zi' (《俗语有所自》, 'Common Sayings Have Their Origins'), Wang Mao traced various everyday expressions back to classical sources and remarked that sayings of this kind were too numerous to list one by one. The sentence '似此等语，不可枚举' ('sayings of this sort cannot be enumerated') became the canonical source cited by later lexicons.
💡 Example Usage
这本书中所载的奇闻轶事，不可枚举。
The strange tales and anecdotes recorded in this book are too numerous to enumerate one by one.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 不可枚举
- Pinyin: bù kě méi jǔ
- Literal Translation: not, can, one-by-one, enumerate
- Category: Variety
- Characters: 4