📖 Meaning
To follow established routines and stick to old ways of doing things. It describes someone who is conservative, unwilling to innovate, and content to repeat past practices without seeking improvement or change.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom comes from the Ming dynasty scholar Jiao Hong and his work Jiao Shi Bi Cheng (Notes of the Jiao Family), in the preface section titled Xu Lu. Jiao Hong observed that scholars of his time had fallen into the habit of merely treading familiar paths and inheriting old conventions, no longer making any real effort to investigate or seek new understanding. The phrase was later widely used in literary and intellectual criticism, appearing for example in the Qing dynasty writer Huang Zongxi's preface to Zhang Xinyou's poetry, where he complained that even in Tang poetry there were works that simply repeated old conventions with empty grandeur but no genuine spirit.
💡 Example Usage
这家企业若总是蹈常袭故，缺乏创新，迟早会被市场淘汰。
If this company keeps following old routines and never innovates, it will sooner or later be eliminated by the market.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 蹈常袭故
- Pinyin: dǎo cháng xí gù
- Literal Translation: tread the usual, inherit the old
- Category: Attitude
- Characters: 4