Chinese idioms (chengyu): the most common ones and the stories behind them

What is a chengyu?

A chengyu, 成语(chéngyǔ), is a set phrase, almost always four characters long. Many come from classical Chinese, so they pack a lot into very little.

Take "wait by the stump for a rabbit", 守株待兔(shǒu zhū dài tù). Word for word, it's "guard stump, wait rabbit". It means waiting for luck instead of working, and it points to a story more than two thousand years old.

Nobody agrees on how many there are. The open dictionary CC-CEDICT labels about 5,000 four-character entries as idioms.

Big Chinese idiom dictionaries list 30,000 or more. In one open copy, nearly every entry has exactly four characters.

Most of those you'll never meet. We checked each of CC-CEDICT's idioms against 160 million characters of real Chinese, and about one in five never showed up once.

One note on pinyin before the list. We show each character's dictionary tone, as CC-CEDICT does. In speech, 一(yī) and 不(bù) change tone, so 一模一样(yī mú yī yàng) is said yì mú yí yàng. Our tone sandhi checker shows how.

The 10 most common chengyu

The idioms Chinese speakers use most are plain descriptions. We counted every idiom in two big collections of real Chinese: 29,000 film and TV subtitle files, for speech, and a million news sentences, for writing. Then we ranked each idiom by how often it appears across both.

Here are the ten that came out on top:

Source: our count in OpenSubtitles 2018 and the Leipzig Chinese news corpus; geometric mean of the two rates. Method at the end.

Notice what's missing: animals, emperors and morals. You could guess most of these from their characters. Word for word, one of a kind, 独一无二(dú yī wú èr), is "only one, no two".

That's good news. The idioms you need first are the easiest to learn.

Explore all 129 idioms

The explorer holds our top 100, plus the idioms behind SayMei's idiom stories and the ones popular lists like to teach. Search in English, characters or pinyin, then tap a card for a word-for-word gloss, an example sentence and the source.

Famous idioms are rarely used

The idioms most guides teach first are some of the rarest. We read the 10 top search results for "chinese idioms" and "chengyu" and noted every idiom they list.

Here's how their favorites rank in our count:

Source: the 10 pages we read on 7 October 2026 (listed in Sources) and our count. Rank among about 5,000 idioms.

None of the idioms that three or more guides list makes our top 100. The closest is wholeheartedly, 一心一意(yī xīn yī yì), at number 221.

Meanwhile, most of our top 20 appear on none of the lists.

Why the gap? A story is more fun to teach than "hard to believe".

Learn the famous ones for culture and reading: they make great stories, and most sit on the HSK's top levels. Learn the frequent ones to understand what people say.

Some idioms are spoken, others written

Film dialogue and news share fewer idioms than you'd think. Only a quarter of the 100 most common idioms in our subtitles also make the news top 100.

Here's how eight common idioms split:

You'll hear thank goodness, 谢天谢地(xiè tiān xiè dì), all the time in films. In the news it barely exists. As everyone knows, 众所周知(zhòng suǒ zhōu zhī), runs the other way.

So match the idiom to the setting. In conversation, reach for the spoken ones. Save the newsy ones for essays and exam answers, where they sound right.

How many chengyu do you need?

Fewer than you'd fear. Idiom use is lopsided: a small group of idioms does most of the work.

Here's how much of all idiom use the most common ones cover:

Source: our count; idioms ranked as in the top-10 chart above.

The HSK agrees that idioms are advanced. In the 2025 HSK 3.0 exam syllabus, almost all four-character words sit in the top band, levels 7 to 9.

Here's where our top 100 land:

Source: the HSK 3.0 exam syllabus (CLEC, 2025), as parsed for our HSK 3.0 guide.

Some very useful idioms aren't on the list at all, including thank goodness, 谢天谢地(xiè tiān xiè dì), and so that's it, 原来如此(yuán lái rú cǐ).

A sensible plan: learn the top 25 around HSK 4 or 5. Then work through the top 100 by theme as you read more, and add the rest as you meet them. The HSK vocabulary lists show which ones the exam expects.

The stories behind the famous ones

The famous story idioms are old. Ten of the 18 that SayMei retells go back to the Warring States, before China was unified in 221 BC.

Here's when they were written down:

Sources: the original texts on Wikisource, linked in the explorer. The Strategies of the Warring States was compiled around the 1st century BC from older material.

Many began as arguments. A philosopher or an adviser told a quick, funny story to win a point, often in front of a king. Six of the best known:

• Wait by the stump for a rabbit, 守株待兔(shǒu zhū dài tù). A farmer sees a rabbit break its neck on a tree stump. He drops his plough and waits for another. None comes. From the Han Feizi.
• Draw a snake, add feet, 画蛇添足(huà shé tiān zú). Servants race to draw a snake for a cup of wine. The fastest adds feet, and loses, because snakes have none. From the Strategies of the Warring States.
• A frog in a well, 井底之蛙(jǐng dǐ zhī wā). A frog boasts about its little well to a turtle from the sea, until the turtle describes the ocean. From the Zhuangzi.
• The old man loses his horse, 塞翁失马(sài wēng shī mǎ). A lost horse comes back with another, the son breaks a leg riding it, and the broken leg keeps him out of a deadly war. Luck keeps flipping. From the Huainanzi.
• Play the lute to a cow, 对牛弹琴(duì niú tán qín). A musician plays refined music to an ox, which keeps on grazing. From Mouzi.
• Spear and shield, 自相矛盾(zì xiāng máo dùn). A seller swears his spear pierces anything and his shield stops everything. Someone asks what happens if the spear hits the shield. From the Han Feizi. That's why 矛盾(máodùn), "spear-shield", now means contradiction.

SayMei Stories retells all 18 in three short books at about HSK 1: the first, the second and the third. Every line has pinyin, an English translation and audio. The first story in each book is free to read.

Chengyu, proverbs and two-part sayings

"Chinese sayings" can mean four different things. Chengyu are only one of them.

Here's how to tell them apart:

Source: meanings and pinyin from CC-CEDICT.

If you want a proverb for a card or a speech, a 谚语(yànyǔ) is usually what you're after. If you want to sound natural in conversation, the common chengyu and everyday phrases matter more.

Learn chengyu in phrases, not lists

Idioms stick best when you learn them the way people use them. Here's a routine that works:

1. Start with the top 25. Open the explorer on "Top 25" and learn five a week.
2. Learn each one with a partner phrase. Pair 难以置信(nán yǐ zhì xìn) with 便宜得难以置信 piányi de nán yǐ zhì xìn, unbelievably cheap. You'll remember the phrase, not just the meaning.
3. Say them out loud. Use one new idiom in a sentence about your own day. That's when it starts to belong to you.
4. Notice them in shows. Once you know an idiom, you'll start hearing it in Chinese films and dramas.
5. Read the stories for the famous ones. A story makes an old idiom unforgettable, and it's easier than memorizing a gloss.

One caveat: don't overdo it. Learners on forums such as Chinese-forums have long warned that forcing literary idioms into small talk can sound stiff. The everyday ones at the top of our list are safe.

What to do next

• Learn the top 25 first. They're the ones you'll meet most often.
• Keep the famous ones for stories. Read the tale behind each one; it's the best way to make an old idiom stick.
• Match idiom to setting. Spoken idioms for talking, newsy ones for writing.
• Practise out loud. An idiom you've said a few times comes back when you need it.