📖 Meaning
This idiom metaphorically describes exhausting one's mental faculties and putting in painstaking effort. It is commonly used to characterize the arduous dedication one devotes to undertakings, work, or artistic creation. It is synonymous with the idiom 鉥心刿目.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom uses the vivid imagery of boring into the liver and cutting the kidneys to convey the painful intensity of deep thought and mental exertion. The characters 鉥 and 刿 both carry the sense of piercing or cutting, employed metaphorically in classical Chinese literary tradition to emphasize how consuming intellectual labor can feel. It does not trace to a single specific historical anecdote but belongs to a family of expressions in Chinese letters that equate extreme mental effort with visceral, bodily suffering. Such imagery was favored by literati to convey the seriousness and suffering behind scholarly or artistic achievement.
💡 Example Usage
为了完成这部学术著作，他鉥肝刿肾地工作了整整五年。
To complete this academic work, he devoted himself to it with painstaking effort for five full years.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 鉥肝刿肾
- Pinyin: diāo gān guì shèn
- Literal Translation: bore the liver, cut the kidney
- Category: Perseverance
- Characters: 4