📖 Meaning
Literally 'piling beds on beds and building houses on houses.' It is a metaphor for needless repetition, redundancy, or piling up identical things to no purpose. The idiom describes writing, speech, or actions that are needlessly duplicative and cumbersome.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase traces back to Yan Zhitui of the Northern Qi dynasty, who wrote in the preface of his 'Yanshi Jiaxun' (Family Instructions of Master Yan) that since the Wei and Jin periods, the philosophical works produced by various authors had become repetitive in reasoning and redundant in content, with later writers merely imitating earlier ones. He likened this trend to building a house beneath an existing house, or placing a bed on top of another bed—pointless duplication that adds nothing new. From this critique of derivative scholarship came the idiom describing any superfluous, overlapping construction or expression.
💡 Example Usage
这篇文章内容空洞，迭床架屋，读起来很费劲。
This article is hollow in content and full of needless repetition, making it a struggle to read.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 迭床架屋
- Pinyin: dié chuáng jià wū
- Literal Translation: stack, bed, frame, house
- Category: Quality
- Characters: 4