📖 Meaning
To suffer misfortune during a time of national peril and collapse. It describes encountering calamity in a turbulent, dangerous era when one's circumstances have been overturned. The idiom conveys a sense of helplessness before overwhelming historical forces.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom originates from the Chu Ci (Songs of Chu), specifically from 'Jiu Tan: Yuan Shi' (Nine Laments: Distant Journey) by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang. Liu Xiang was a prominent bibliographer and Confucian scholar of the Western Han period who himself suffered political setbacks. The commentator Wang Yi of the Eastern Han explained that the author suffered in a perilous, collapsing era and encountered disasters that could not be remedied, leaving him to sigh endlessly and weep without cease. The phrase thus reflects the grief of a righteous person trapped in troubled times beyond their control.
💡 Example Usage
他遭倾遇祸，却仍坚守初心，不曾屈服于命运。
Though he met with disaster in perilous times, he held fast to his original aspirations and never surrendered to fate.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 遭倾遇祸
- Pinyin: zāo qīng yù huò
- Literal Translation: encounter, collapse, meet, disaster
- Category: Condition
- Characters: 4