📖 Meaning
This idiom refers to deliberately manipulating words and twisting the wording of legal provisions to serve one's own purposes. It describes corrupt officials who exploit legal loopholes through clever textual interpretation, bending the law to their advantage rather than upholding justice.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase originates from a memorial titled 'On Five Matters' written by the Song Dynasty official Su Shunqin in the fourth year of Jingyou (1037). In it, he condemned local officials as cunning and wicked, noting that the corrupt ones would be lured by profit and then 'split the law and dance with text'—manipulating legal language to sell verdicts and manipulate punishments. Su Shunqin warned that such officials colluded to fix outcomes, lightening or harshening sentences at will. The memorial was a sharp critique of judicial corruption in the Song bureaucracy.
💡 Example Usage
那些贪官析律舞文，将无辜百姓定为死罪。
Those corrupt officials twisted the law through clever wordplay, sentencing innocent commoners to death.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 析律舞文
- Pinyin: xī lǜ wǔ wēn
- Literal Translation: analyze, law, dance with, text
- Category: Power
- Characters: 4