📖 Meaning
To strip away carving and ornamentation and uphold simplicity. It also refers to correcting extravagant, showy customs so that people return to plain and honest ways. The idiom praises restraint and naturalness over ostentatious decoration.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase appears in the Records of the Grand Historian (《史记》), in the Biographies of Cruel Officials, which describes the rise of the Han dynasty: '破觚而为圜，斫雕而为朴' — breaking square vessels into round ones, cutting away carved decoration to restore plainness. It also appears in the Book of the Later Han (《后汉书》) in the preface to the biographies of the empresses, where Emperor Guangwu's restoration of the Eastern Han (光武中兴) is credited with cutting away ornament and returning to simplicity in palace titles. In modern times, the scholar Zhang Binglin (章炳麟) used the phrase in his essay 文学说例 to praise plain, fact-seeking prose.
💡 Example Usage
此间陈设一律斫雕为朴，不见浮华。
All the furnishings here have been stripped of ornament back to plainness, with no trace of ostentation.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 斫雕为朴
- Pinyin: zhuó diāo wéi pǔ
- Literal Translation: cut, carve, become, plain
- Category: Quality
- Characters: 4