📖 Meaning
A metaphor for a lonely bachelor anxiously seeking a spouse. The 'widower fish' (a fish said to never close its eyes) symbolizes a sleepless, solitary man, while 'thirsting for the phoenix' conveys his desperate longing for a mate.
📜 Origin Story
From the Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin's 'Song of Lady Li' (《李夫人歌》), the third poem, which reads: 'Clear and limpid with lingering subtle fragrance, like a widower fish thirsting for a phoenix in a pearl chamber.' Li Shangyin drew on the folk belief that the widower fish never sleeps to evoke the restless yearning of a solitary man craving female companionship. The idiom later came to describe any single man desperately seeking a wife.
💡 Example Usage
他年过四十仍未娶妻，鳏鱼渴凤般日夜盼着能寻得良缘。
Past forty and still unmarried, he yearned day and night like a widower fish thirsting for a phoenix, hoping to find a good match.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 鳏鱼渴凤
- Pinyin: guān yú kě fèng
- Literal Translation: widower fish, thirsty, phoenix
- Category: Emotion
- Characters: 4