So rattled that everything looks like a threat
The gap between those first two lines is the whole point of a chengyu. It is quoted whole, never assembled, and the literal reading is a picture from the story below rather than a definition — which is why translating the four characters one at a time rarely gets you there.
Fu Jian looked out from the walls at the Battle of Fei River, saw the enemy in disciplined ranks, then looked at the wooded slopes behind them — and took every bush and tree on the hillside for another company of troops. His nerve broke before his army did.
Source: 《晋书》Book of Jin, 7th century AD
The reading shown is the one each character takes inside this idiom — chengyu keep older readings, so it is not always the everyday one. The meanings are read from the same dictionary that powers the translators.
Want the stroke order for one of these? Each character links to its dictionary entry, which animates it.
草木皆兵 is pronounced cǎo mù jiē bīng and means so rattled that everything looks like a threat. Literally it says "every grass and tree is a soldier" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《晋书》Book of Jin, 7th century AD. Fu Jian looked out from the walls at the Battle of Fei River, saw the enemy in disciplined ranks, then looked at the wooded slopes behind them — and took every bush and tree on the hillside for another company of troops. His nerve broke before his army did.
cǎo mù jiē bīng. Press the audio button on this page to hear it spoken by a native voice. Tones here are citation tones, so 一 is written yī even where it is said yí in running speech.
草 (cǎo) Grass (straw - hasty), 木 (mù) Tree (wood - stupid), 皆 (jiē) All (every), 兵 (bīng) Soldiers (army - military). These meanings come from the same dictionary as the translators on this site, and the reading shown is the one the character takes inside this idiom.
Yes. Chengyu are not archaic — they are ordinary educated speech, and they turn up in conversation, newspapers and exams. This one sits in the intermediate band, which reflects how common it is and how hard its characters are.
Rebuild 草木皆兵 from scrambled tiles in the Chengyu Story Puzzle, test yourself on idiom meanings in the Chengyu Quiz, browse all the idioms, or save this one above and review it on your review deck.
Every idiom here comes with the story it was compressed from — that is the rule for being listed, and it is why they stick.
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