📖 Meaning
When one is starving, one will eat whatever is available without being picky. The idiom is used metaphorically to describe someone in urgent need who cannot afford to be selective about what they take, even if the options are less than ideal.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom comes from the Song Dynasty Buddhist text 《五灯会元》 (Compendium of Five Lamps), compiled by the monk Shi Puji. In a Zen dialogue recorded in the thirtieth volume, a monk asks the master: 'What is the household style of a Chan master?' The master replies: 'The hungry do not choose their food.' The exchange uses the plain image of a starving person eating anything as an expression of Zen simplicity and unpretentiousness, and the phrase later became a common saying for desperate need overriding discrimination.
💡 Example Usage
他这几天饿坏了，饥不择食地把桌上的剩菜都吃光了。
He had been starving these past few days, so, hungry and unselective, he gobbled up all the leftover dishes on the table.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 饥不择食
- Pinyin: jī bù zé shí
- Literal Translation: hungry, not, choose, food
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4