📖 Meaning
Using meat to drive away ants only attracts more ants. It describes a self-contradictory approach where the chosen method directly works against the intended goal, inevitably producing the opposite result. The idiom criticizes solutions that worsen the very problem they aim to solve.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase originates from 'Han Feizi · Wai Chu Shuo Zuo Xia' (Outer Congregation of Explanations, Lower Left), written by the Legalist philosopher Han Fei (c. 280–233 BCE) during the Warring States period. The full passage reads: 'Using meat to drive away ants makes the ants more numerous; using fish to drive away flies makes the flies come even more.' Han Fei employed this vivid metaphor to warn rulers that ill-conceived governance methods would aggravate the very ills they sought to remedy, a key insight of his pragmatic Legalist philosophy.
💡 Example Usage
靠增发货币来抑制通胀，无异于以肉去蚁。
Trying to curb inflation by printing more money is no different from using meat to drive away ants.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 以肉去蚁
- Pinyin: yǐ ròu qù yǐ
- Literal Translation: use, meat, to, drive away, ants
- Category: Logic
- Characters: 4