📖 Meaning
This idiom means setting aside affairs that can wait in order to attend to what is pressing. It describes prioritizing tasks by urgency and dealing with the most time-sensitive matters first. It is often used in contexts of administration, planning, or handling a crisis.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase appears in archival documents gathered in the modern Chinese historical source series 'The 1911 Revolution' (辛亥革命), in the section on the Railway Protection Movement and the Sichuan railway case. In a dispatch from the late Qing period, the writer argues that affairs should be roughly ranked in order of precedence, and that by adopting a plan of setting aside the less urgent to attend to the pressing, the situation in Sichuan could still be salvaged. The document reflects Qing officials grappling with the crisis over railway rights in the dynasty's final years. No single individual is named in the quoted line itself, but the phrase has since passed into general use for prioritizing urgent business.
💡 Example Usage
当下资金紧张，公司只能移缓就急，先保障重点项目。
With funding tight, the company had to set aside less urgent work and prioritize its key projects.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 移缓就急
- Pinyin: yí huǎn jiù jí
- Literal Translation: set aside, the less urgent, attend to, the urgent
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4