📖 Meaning
This idiom describes tearing down one's own house just to catch a mouse. It is a metaphor for shortsightedness — sacrificing something major or causing enormous damage to achieve a trivial goal, essentially losing the forest for a single tree.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom originates from the "Huainanzi" (《淮南子》), a Western Han Dynasty philosophical text compiled under the patronage of Liu An, Prince of Huainan. In the chapter "Shuo Shan Xun" (说山训), a series of foolish actions are listed: destroying a pond to catch a turtle, pulling down a house to find a wildcat, digging up a house to seek a mouse, and cutting one's lip to cure tooth decay. The text concludes that a gentleman would never associate with such self-destructive, narrow-minded behavior, paralleling the ways of tyrants like Jie and Zhi.
💡 Example Usage
为了一点小利牺牲大局，无异于掘室求鼠。
Sacrificing the big picture for a tiny gain is no different from digging up a house to catch a mouse.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 掘室求鼠
- Pinyin: jué shì qiú shǔ
- Literal Translation: dig, house, seek, mouse
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4