📖 Meaning
A metaphor for making rash judgments based solely on partial understanding or limited experience. It describes someone who draws erroneous conclusions without seeing the whole picture, relying on fragmentary secondhand information instead of firsthand observation. The idiom warns against mistaking a small part for the whole.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from Su Shi's essay 'Parable of the Sun' (日喻) written during the Song Dynasty. The essay tells of a person blind from birth who tries to understand what the sun looks like by asking sighted people. When told the sun resembles a copper plate, he later mistakes a bell for the sun after hearing its sound; when told the sun's light is like a candle, he later mistakes a key for the sun after feeling its shape. The sun is fundamentally different from bells and keys, yet the blind man cannot tell the difference because he has never actually seen it and relies entirely on others' incomplete descriptions.
💡 Example Usage
若不深入调研便妄下结论，无异于盲翁扪钥，难免闹出笑话。
To draw conclusions without thorough investigation is like a blind old man feeling a key — one is bound to make a fool of oneself.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 盲翁扪钥
- Pinyin: máng wēng mén yào
- Literal Translation: blind, old man, feel, key
- Category: Knowledge
- Characters: 4