📖 Meaning
This idiom means to reverse right and wrong — to call the wrong right and the right wrong. Here 是 means "right" and 非 means "wrong," while 颠倒 means to turn something upside down or confound it. It is used to criticize someone who knowingly distorts the facts through malice, bias, or carelessness.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase comes from a tomb inscription, 《施先生墓铭》, written by the Tang dynasty essayist Han Yu (韩愈) for 施士丐 (Shi Shigai), a scholar specializing in the Spring and Autumn Annals. In the inscription, Han Yu reflects that the words of the ancient sages are subtle and profound in meaning. Yet over the centuries, commentaries and annotations upon the classics have proliferated wildly, becoming tangled and confusing. Rather than clarifying the sages' intent, these writings end up reversing right and wrong (颠倒是非) and misrepresenting the original teachings. Han Yu's critique of such scholarship later became a set idiom for deliberately confusing truth with falsehood.
💡 Example Usage
他为了推卸责任，竟颠倒是非，把别人的好心说成恶意。
In order to shirk responsibility, he actually reversed right and wrong, painting another person's good intentions as malice.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 颠倒是非
- Pinyin: diān dǎo shì fēi
- Literal Translation: turn upside down, right, wrong
- Category: Communication
- Characters: 4