📖 Meaning
This idiom metaphorically describes attacking a powerful opponent with inadequate or far weaker means. The image of sending sheep to fight wolves conveys the hopeless mismatch between the forces employed and the adversary faced. It is used to criticize a strategy doomed to fail because of overwhelming disparity in strength.
📜 Origin Story
Unlike many classical idioms, 驱羊战狼 has no single recorded source text or associated historical anecdote. The vivid imagery—driving sheep into battle against wolves—draws on a universally obvious mismatch in the animal world to illustrate the folly of confronting a vastly superior force. Similar livestock-versus-predator metaphors appear across Chinese military writings and folk wisdom, and this phrase likely crystallized as a later vernacular construction rather than deriving from a named dynasty, text, or figure.
💡 Example Usage
以这点兵力去进攻敌军主力，无异于驱羊战狼。
Attacking the enemy's main force with these meager troops is like driving sheep to fight wolves.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 驱羊战狼
- Pinyin: qū yáng zhàn láng
- Literal Translation: drive sheep, fight wolves
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4