📖 Meaning
A broken twig and floating duckweed drifting on the water. It is a metaphor for living a wandering, displaced life without a fixed home. The idiom evokes the image of being rootless and at the mercy of currents.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom originates from the Yuan dynasty play 'Luo Li Lang' (罗李郎) by Zhang Guobin (张国宾). In the second act, a character laments someone leaving alone to drift like a broken twig and floating duckweed, causing his family of three to suffer in anxious longing. The imagery of plant fragments floating helplessly on water became a lasting metaphor for a life of displacement.
💡 Example Usage
他自幼失去双亲，半生梗泛萍漂，至今未得安身之所。
Having lost his parents as a child, he has drifted rootlessly for half his life and still has no place to settle.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 梗泛萍漂
- Pinyin: gěng fàn píng piāo
- Literal Translation: broken twig, floating, duckweed, drifting
- Category: Status
- Characters: 4