📖 Meaning
To destroy a family's ancestral temple and extinguish its ritual sacrifices, thereby wiping out the entire lineage. It refers to the complete annihilation of a clan, leaving no descendants to carry on the family name and ancestral rites. The idiom is also written as 覆宗绝嗣.
📜 Origin Story
No specific classical source is recorded for this idiom. The phrase draws on the deep significance of ancestral worship in ancient China, where the ancestral temple (宗庙) and sacrificial rites (祭祀) were the spiritual and social pillars of a clan's continuity. To "overturn the temple and extinguish the sacrifices" was the ultimate catastrophe — it meant not just death, but the erasure of a family's existence from memory and history. The idiom was used in historical and literary contexts to describe the fate of fallen noble houses, defeated regimes, or families wiped out by war and political purges.
💡 Example Usage
这场战乱使许多世家大族覆宗灭祀，断了香火。
This war caused many aristocratic families to be completely wiped out, their ancestral lines severed forever.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 覆宗灭祀
- Pinyin: fù zōng miè sì
- Literal Translation: overturn, ancestral temple, extinguish, sacrifice
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4