📖 Meaning
The ink has not yet dried. It is used metaphorically to mean that an agreement or treaty was signed only moments ago, most often employed to accuse the other party of breaking a promise almost immediately after making it. The phrase carries a tone of indignation at such swift betrayal.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom is recorded in Tong Xiaopeng's memoir 'Chairman Mao Goes to Chongqing,' which recounts the 1945 Chongqing negotiations between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On October 10, 1945, the two sides signed the Double Tenth Agreement (双十协定) in an effort to secure post-war peace. Tong wrote that while the ink of the agreement was still wet, KMT forces launched large-scale offensives against the Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu (Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan) and Central Plains liberated areas. The phrase thus became a vivid indictment of a freshly-signed pact being violated at once.
💡 Example Usage
墨迹未干，对方就撕毁了刚签的合同。
Before the ink was even dry, the other side tore up the contract we had just signed.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 墨迹未干
- Pinyin: mò jì wèi gān
- Literal Translation: ink, traces, not yet, dry
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4