📖 Meaning
To cut away the superfluous and complex parts so that something becomes simple and clear. It describes the act of pruning excess detail, redundancy, or ornament in writing, speech, or procedure in pursuit of conciseness and ease of understanding.
📜 Origin Story
The idiom's earliest related expression appears in the ancient text 《尚书纬》, which uses the phrase 删夷繁乱 (cut away disorder and excess). In the Song dynasty, the literary critic 严羽 wrote in 《历代诗话·诗法家数》 that the art of the four-line quatrain (绝句) should be 婉曲回环，删芜就简 — meandering yet elegant, pruning away the superfluous toward the simple. The wording later crystallized into 芟繁就简, and by the Ming dynasty it was in common documentary use, as seen in 焦竑's 《玉堂丛语》.
💡 Example Usage
写公文要芟繁就简，把核心结论放在最前面。
When writing official documents, one should prune the superfluous and keep things simple, putting the core conclusion up front.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 芟繁就简
- Pinyin: shān fán jiù jiǎn
- Literal Translation: remove, complexity, move toward, simplicity
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4