📖 Meaning
Literally 'accumulating years and piling up years,' this idiom describes something that has continued or built up over a very long period of time. It is equivalent to the more common phrase 积年累月 (jī nián lěi yuè). It emphasizes the great length of time involved rather than any specific outcome.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase appears in 'Erke Paian Jingqi' (二刻拍案惊奇, Slapping the Table in Amazement, Second Collection), a collection of vernacular short stories compiled by the Ming Dynasty writer Ling Mengchu (凌濛初). In Volume 5, a captured thief finally confesses the truth: that over many long years (积年累岁), whenever festive seasons and celebrations arrived, he would go out far and wide to plunder and steal, and in ordinary times he trafficked in children and took lives. The idiom thus originally described the prolonged, habitual nature of the criminal's wrongdoing.
💡 Example Usage
这项工程积年累岁才得以完成。
This project was completed only after many long years of accumulated effort.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 积年累岁
- Pinyin: jī nián lěi suì
- Literal Translation: accumulate, years, pile up, years
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4