📖 Meaning
Refers to errors that occur when copying or transmitting texts by hand, where visually similar characters are mistaken for one another. It illustrates how easily written words can be corrupted through repeated transcription.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom comes from the Jin dynasty scholar Ge Hong's work 'Baopuzi' (抱朴子), which records a proverb: 'After being copied three times, the character for fish (鱼) becomes Lu (鲁), and the character for emperor (帝) becomes tiger (虎).' The saying highlights how scribes, working from handwritten manuscripts, would misread and miscopy characters that looked similar in ancient script, leading to accumulated errors in textual transmission.
💡 Example Usage
古籍整理工作中最怕的就是鲁鱼帝虎，稍有不慎便会贻误后学。
What collators of ancient texts dread most are transcription errors like 'Lu for fish, emperor for tiger' — a single moment of carelessness can mislead generations of future scholars.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 鲁鱼帝虎
- Pinyin: lǔ yú dì hǔ
- Literal Translation: Lu, fish, emperor, tiger
- Category: Communication
- Characters: 4