📖 Meaning
Describes a married couple enduring poverty together, weeping in shared hardship. It evokes the image of husband and wife crying side by side in destitution with no comfort but a coarse cow blanket. The idiom conveys the sorrow and solidarity of spouses facing extreme misfortune.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom originates from the Han dynasty story of Wang Zhang (王章), who fell gravely ill while living in poverty and had only a rough cow blanket (牛衣) for warmth. Convinced he was dying, Wang Zhang and his wife wept together through the night. His wife urged him to stay strong, saying that no one in the imperial capital would weep under a cow blanket, encouraging him not to give up. Wang Zhang later recovered and rose to become a prominent official. The Tang poet Wen Tingyun (温庭筠) subsequently employed the phrase '牛衣夜哭' in his literary work '上裴舍人启' to memorialize this image of shared destitution.
💡 Example Usage
他们夫妻二人牛衣夜哭，熬过了最艰难的岁月。
The couple wept together in poverty, enduring the most difficult years of their lives.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 牛衣夜哭
- Pinyin: niú yī yè kū
- Literal Translation: cow, blanket, night, weep
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4