📖 Meaning
Describes the anxious, eager longing of parents awaiting their children's return home. It vividly depicts a parent first leaning against the house gate to watch, then walking further out to lean against the village alley entrance as worry deepens with each passing hour.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom comes from "Strategies of the Warring States" (战国策·齐策六), dating to the Warring States period (475–221 BCE). When Wangsun Jia, a minister of the State of Qi, was away serving his lord, his mother described how she would lean against the gate waiting if he had gone out in the morning and not returned by evening, and would lean against the alley entrance if he had left at dusk and still had not come back. The phrase immortalizes a parent's restless, watchful vigil.
💡 Example Usage
母亲倚门倚闾，盼着在外求学的儿子早日归来。
The mother leaned against the gate and the alley entrance, longing for her son who was studying far away to return home soon.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 倚门倚闾
- Pinyin: yǐ mén yǐ lǚ
- Literal Translation: lean against gate, lean against alley door
- Category: Emotion
- Characters: 4