📖 Meaning
When a person is in a desperate or urgent situation, a clever idea suddenly comes to mind. It describes how pressure and crisis can spark resourcefulness and quick thinking. The phrase emphasizes that necessity often breeds ingenuity.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase originates from the Yuan dynasty play 《幽闺记·文武同盟》by 施惠, where a character faces a towering wall and despairs of leaping over it, recalling the old saying '人急计生' before grabbing an apricot blossom branch to vault across. Over time the wording was standardized as 人急智生, emphasizing the birth of wisdom under pressure. It later appeared in classical novels such as 《水浒全传》, where the monk 鲁智深, cornered in a kitchen, seizes on a quick stratagem to escape his predicament. The idiom thus carries a long literary pedigree linking crisis to ingenuity.
💡 Example Usage
他在山路上偶遇野猪，人急智生，立刻爬上了旁边的大树躲避。
Meeting a wild boar on the mountain path, he suddenly had a bright idea and quickly climbed up a nearby tree to hide.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 人急智生
- Pinyin: rén jí zhì shēng
- Literal Translation: person, urgent, wisdom, arises
- Category: Wisdom
- Characters: 4