📖 Meaning
Describes the appearance of fear and apprehension. The image is of a person hunching their shoulders and rising onto the balls of their feet, ready to flee at any moment. It is a variant written form of the idiom 胁肩累足.
📜 Origin Story
This phrase is a character variant of 胁肩累足 (xié jiān lěi zú), in which the archaic graph 絫 (lèi) is used in place of the more common 累. The original expression depicts the involuntary body language of a terrified person — drawing the shoulders up and lifting the heels off the ground, as though caught between flight and paralysis. Such vivid descriptions of fearful posture recur in Han-dynasty and later historical writing, where physical bearing betrays inner dread. No single definitive textual source is recorded for this particular variant spelling.
💡 Example Usage
他一听说官差来了，顿时胁肩絫足，吓得说不出话来。
As soon as he heard the constables had come, he shrank back with hunched shoulders and frozen feet, too terrified to utter a word.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 胁肩絫足
- Pinyin: xié jiān lèi zú
- Literal Translation: shrug the shoulders, stand on tiptoes
- Category: Emotion
- Characters: 4