📖 Meaning
Describes something as extremely strange, bizarre, and fantastical. The idiom likens the strangeness to the vast, unreachable expanse of the Milky Way, implying something so otherworldly it defies ordinary comprehension.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom is composed of 邈 (distant, far-reaching), 若 (as if, like), and 河汉 (the Milky Way), a classical Chinese term evoking the image of a vast, remote galaxy of stars beyond human reach. In ancient Chinese cosmology, the Milky Way symbolized the boundary between the mortal and the divine, something impossibly distant and mysterious. By comparing a thing or idea to the far-off Milky Way, the phrase came to characterize phenomena so bizarre and fantastical that they seem to belong to another realm entirely. No single definitive textual source is recorded for this exact four-character combination.
💡 Example Usage
这番言论邈若河汉，令人难以置信。
This statement is so bizarre and fantastical that it is hard to believe.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 邈若河汉
- Pinyin: miǎo ruò hé hàn
- Literal Translation: distant, like, river, Milky Way
- Category: Quality
- Characters: 4