📖 Meaning
Similar to the idiom 恼羞成怒 (turn shame into rage). It describes someone who, having been driven to the extreme of shame, channels that humiliation into anger. The phrase emphasizes how accumulated embarrassment ultimately transforms into fury.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase comes from a commemorative essay by the late-Qing reformer Liang Qichao, written for the hundredth issue of The China Discussion (清议报), a newspaper he published while in exile in Japan. In the essay he describes how, when subjects dared to remonstrate and foreign powers looked askance, certain ambitions could not be realized. Unable to achieve their aims, those in power accumulated shame into anger and launched large-scale prosecutions of political factions.
💡 Example Usage
被当众揭穿谎言后，他积羞成怒，摔门而去。
After his lies were exposed in public, he became furious out of shame and stormed out.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 积羞成怒
- Pinyin: jī xiū chéng nù
- Literal Translation: accumulate, shame, become, anger
- Category: Emotion
- Characters: 4