📖 Meaning
This idiom describes advising someone with earnest, repeated persuasion out of genuine kindness, even when the words are hard to hear. It likens the speaker's tireless exhortation to a bitter-tasting medicine given with a grandmother's loving concern. It is used for someone who patiently and earnestly tries to talk another person out of a harmful course of action.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase draws on two classical sources. The first is the Biography of Zhao Pu in the History of Song, where Zhao Pu repeatedly submitted memorials containing blunt but loyal advice, described as words that are bitter to the mouth. The second is the Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, a Song-dynasty Chan Buddhist text, in which a monk asks the teacher Daokuang of Quanzhou for compassionate guidance, and the master replies that such patient, kindly instruction is the heart of an old woman. Together they formed the idiom meaning to persuade earnestly and patiently out of deep concern.
💡 Example Usage
母亲苦口婆心地劝了他一整夜，要他戒掉赌博。
His mother spent the whole night earnestly and patiently trying to persuade him to give up gambling.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 苦口婆心
- Pinyin: kǔ kǒu pó xīn
- Literal Translation: bitter mouth, old woman's heart
- Category: Communication
- Characters: 4