📖 Meaning
To esteem the past while belittling the present. This idiom criticizes a biased mindset that blindly venerates ancient things and dismisses contemporary achievements, regardless of their actual merit. It reflects a prejudice against one's own era in favor of an idealized past.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from a letter written by Fan Ye (范晔), a renowned historian of the Liu Song dynasty during the Southern Dynasties period, while he was imprisoned. In his letter titled 'In Prison, A Letter to My Nephews with a Self-Preface' (《狱中与诸甥侄书以自序》), Fan Ye reflected on his monumental historical work, the Book of Later Han (《后汉书》). He worried that contemporary readers, biased by the tendency to 'value the ancient and despise the present,' would fail to fully appreciate the depth and scale of his work, so he preemptively dismissed his own words as 'arrogant and wild ramblings' (称情狂言).
💡 Example Usage
学术界不应贵古贱今，当代学者的研究成果同样值得重视。
Academia should not value the ancient and despise the present — the research achievements of contemporary scholars deserve equal attention.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 贵古贱今
- Pinyin: guì gǔ jiàn jīn
- Literal Translation: value the ancient, despise the contemporary
- Category: Attitude
- Characters: 4