📖 Meaning
A metaphor for an extremely small fragment or remnant of something larger. Like a single broken scale or scrap of armor left behind, it conveys seeing only a tiny, incomplete piece of the whole. It is equivalent to the idiom '片鳞只甲'.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from the work 'New Historiography: China's Old Historiography' (《新史学·中国之旧史学》) by Liang Qichao (梁启超, 1873–1929), a leading intellectual and reformer of the late Qing dynasty. In this essay, Liang criticized traditional Chinese historiography and advocated for a new approach to historical study. He wrote that sometimes one could only glimpse fragments of knowledge by borrowing the writings of foreigners, using '片鳞残甲' to describe these incomplete remnants of information.
💡 Example Usage
散失的古籍中，仅存的片鳞残甲也为研究提供了宝贵线索。
Among the lost ancient texts, even the mere fragments that remain provide valuable clues for research.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 片鳞残甲
- Pinyin: piàn lín cán jiǎ
- Literal Translation: piece, scale, remnant, armor
- Category: Knowledge
- Characters: 4