📖 Meaning
Literally 'spinning a cocoon to bind oneself.' It means doing something that ultimately traps or restricts oneself. The idiom describes how a person's own actions create the very predicament they suffer from.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase appears in Tao Xingzhi's work 'On Mass Education in China' (1930s), where he criticized those who helped enemies form a united front against themselves. He compared such people to silkworms that spin cocoons around their own bodies, thereby trapping themselves. The metaphor draws on the well-known image of a silkworm sealing itself inside its cocoon. The underlying idea — that one's own actions become one's prison — echoes the older classical idiom 作茧自缚, of which 造茧自缚 is a variant form.
💡 Example Usage
他订立了太多繁文缛节，结果造茧自缚，什么事都办不成。
He created so many red-tape rules that he ended up binding himself in his own cocoon, unable to get anything done.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 造茧自缚
- Pinyin: zào jiǎn zì fù
- Literal Translation: make, cocoon, self, bind
- Category: Action
- Characters: 4