📖 Meaning
A bottle that sinks to the bottom of water cannot be retrieved, and a jade hairpin snapped in two cannot be mended. This idiom metaphorically describes the painful and irreversible separation of lovers or a married couple.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi's poem 'Drawing a Silver Bottle from the Bottom of a Well' (《井底引银瓶》). The poem tells of a silver bottle being pulled from a well, only for the silk rope to snap before it reaches the surface, and a jade hairpin being ground on a stone, only to break in half before completion. Bai Juyi used these two vivid images of sudden, irreparable loss to symbolize the finality of lovers parting ways, comparing the bottle sinking and the hairpin snapping to the sorrow of separation.
💡 Example Usage
自瓶沉簪折之后，她再未见过他一面。
After their separation was as final as a sunken bottle and a broken hairpin, she never saw him again.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 瓶沉簪折
- Pinyin: píng chén zān zhé
- Literal Translation: bottle, sink, hairpin, broken
- Category: Emotion
- Characters: 4