📖 Meaning
Literally 'mouth-organ music and singing boiling like a cauldron,' it describes a scene of music and song bubbling up in raucous, joyful abundance. It conveys an atmosphere of festivity so lively that the sound seems to seethe and overflow.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase fuses two classical motifs: 笙歌 (reed-pipe music and singing), a stock image of courtly or festive revelry common in Tang and Song poetry, and 鼎沸, an ancient metaphor likening a tumult to water boiling in a three-legged cauldron. The pairing appears in later vernacular fiction and operatic descriptions of banquets and festivals, where musicians and singers cluster so thickly that the noise surges like a boiling pot. No single canonical source is credited with coining the expression; rather, it crystallized out of conventional poetic diction used to paint crowded, high-spirited celebrations.
💡 Example Usage
元宵灯会上笙歌鼎沸，游人如织，好不热闹。
At the Lantern Festival the sound of music and singing boiled up like a cauldron, as crowds of revelers wove through the lanterns in a splendid bustle.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 笙歌鼎沸
- Pinyin: shēng gē dǐng fèi
- Literal Translation: reed-pipe, song, cauldron, boiling
- Category: Lifestyle
- Characters: 4