📖 Meaning
To be driven by hunger to knock on someone's door begging for food. It describes the plight of being so impoverished and hungry that one is forced to beg from neighbors. The idiom conveys the humiliation and difficulty of asking for help out of sheer necessity.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom originates from a poem by Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming) of the Eastern Jin dynasty, titled 'Begging for Food' (《乞食》). In the poem, Tao Qian writes that hunger drove him out of his home, not knowing where to go, until he wandered into a village and knocked on a door, tongue-tied and unable to find the right words to ask for help. The vivid scene of a proud scholar reduced to begging captures both the hardship of poverty and the dignity of the man who endured it. Later writers such as the Qing dynasty scholar Qian Qianyi referenced this image to contrast differing fortunes.
💡 Example Usage
家境败落后，他一度饥驱叩门，靠邻里接济度日。
After his family fell into ruin, he was once driven by hunger to knock on doors, surviving on the charity of neighbors.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 饥驱叩门
- Pinyin: jī qū kòu mén
- Literal Translation: hunger, drive, knock, door
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4