To cling to a method after the situation has changed
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.
A man crossing a river dropped his sword over the side. He calmly cut a notch in the gunwale to mark the spot, and when the boat reached the far bank he dived in beneath the notch. The boat had moved; the sword had not.
Source: 《吕氏春秋》Lüshi Chunqiu, 239 BC
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.
刻舟求剑 is pronounced kè zhōu qiú jiàn and means to cling to a method after the situation has changed. Literally it says "notch the boat to find the sword" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《吕氏春秋》Lüshi Chunqiu, 239 BC. A man crossing a river dropped his sword over the side. He calmly cut a notch in the gunwale to mark the spot, and when the boat reached the far bank he dived in beneath the notch. The boat had moved; the sword had not.
kè zhōu qiú jiàn. 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.
刻 (kè) Engrave (harsh - extreme), 舟 (zhōu) Boat, 求 (qiú) Beseech (request - ask - seek), 剑 (jiàn) Sword. 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 beginner band, which reflects how common it is and how hard its characters are.
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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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