📖 Meaning
To have no further plan or strategy left; to be out of options. It describes a situation where one has exhausted all alternatives and is left with no choice but to accept the current course of action.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from Sima Qian's 'Records of the Grand Historian' (Shiji), written during the Western Han dynasty, in the appended commentary to the biographies of Ji Bu and Luan Bu. The text observes that when servant women and lowly people commit suicide out of desperation, it is not an act of bravery—it is simply that they have no remaining plan or way out. The phrase thus came to describe the state of having exhausted every possible stratagem, leaving one with no recourse.
💡 Example Usage
敌军四面围困，他计无复之，只得弃械投降。
Surrounded by enemy forces on all sides, he had no plan left and could only lay down his arms and surrender.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 计无复之
- Pinyin: jì wú fù zhī
- Literal Translation: plan, no, again, it
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4