📖 Meaning
An emphatic expression meaning "as large as can be" or "incredibly vast." The double negative construction intensifies the claim that nothing could possibly exceed it in size. It is used to stress the extremity of something's magnitude.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom is a classical Chinese emphatic construction that does not trace to a single specific source text. Its rhetorical structure—"nothing is big, [yet] not big"—uses a layered negation to assert that no comparison can surpass the thing described. Such double-negative intensifiers appear scattered across various vernacular and literary writings without one definitive origin. It remains a relatively rare and archaic expression.
💡 Example Usage
这片海洋无大不大，一眼望不到尽头。
This ocean is as vast as can be, with no end in sight.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 无大不大
- Pinyin: wú dà bù dà
- Literal Translation: nothing, big, not, big
- Category: Quality
- Characters: 4