📖 Meaning
To discard what is false and keep what is genuine. The idiom describes a process of filtering out deception, error, or inauthentic elements in order to arrive at the truth. It is commonly applied to learning, research, and the critical examination of information or evidence.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom has no single recorded literary origin; its dictionary entry lists no specific source (出处: 无). It is formed by combining the classical verbs 去 (to remove) and 存 (to preserve) with the nouns 伪 (the false) and 真 (the true), and its structure echoes the parallel four-character style of classical Chinese. The expression gained wide modern currency through Mao Zedong's essay On Practice (实践论, 1937), where it appears in the series '去粗取精、去伪存真、由此及彼、由表及里' describing how people process raw perceptual material into reliable knowledge. Since then it has become a standard term in dialectical materialism and everyday speech for rigorous, truth-seeking thinking.
💡 Example Usage
人的认识过程就是一个不断由浅入深、去伪存真的过程。
The process of human cognition is one of continuously moving from the shallow to the deep, discarding the false and retaining the true.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 去伪存真
- Pinyin: qù wěi cún zhēn
- Literal Translation: remove false, preserve true
- Category: Logic
- Characters: 4