📖 Meaning
To sort things into distinct categories according to their nature or characteristics. It describes the act of organizing items, knowledge, or data in a systematic and orderly way, making them easier to understand, store, and retrieve. The idiom emphasizes careful classification rather than random grouping.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom appears in the Qing dynasty text Langji Congtan (Random Notes on My Wanderings) by the scholar Liang Zhangju, in a passage about the celebrated physician Ye Tianshi. Ye spent his life practicing medicine and never wrote treatises of his own; after his death, his disciples gathered his prescriptions and successful case records and arranged them systematically into the ten-volume Linzheng Zhinan Yi'an (Guide to Clinical Practice). The phrase 分门别类 describes how the disciples organized Ye's medical cases by category, ensuring his clinical wisdom was preserved for posterity.
💡 Example Usage
图书馆的藏书按学科分门别类，查找起来十分方便。
The library's collection is sorted by subject into distinct categories, making it very convenient to search.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 分门别类
- Pinyin: fēn mén bié lèi
- Literal Translation: divide, category, distinguish, class
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4