A work so admired that everyone must have a copy
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.
Zuo Si spent ten years on his rhapsody on the Three Capitals and was ignored until a famous critic praised it. Then every household of standing in Luoyang wanted a copy, and since copying meant hand-copying, the price of paper in the capital went up.
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.
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洛阳纸贵 is pronounced luò yáng zhǐ guì and means a work so admired that everyone must have a copy. Literally it says "paper grew expensive in Luoyang" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《晋书》Book of Jin, 7th century AD. Zuo Si spent ten years on his rhapsody on the Three Capitals and was ignored until a famous critic praised it. Then every household of standing in Luoyang wanted a copy, and since copying meant hand-copying, the price of paper in the capital went up.
luò yáng zhǐ guì. 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.
洛 (luò) (phonetic), 阳 (yáng) Sun (open - male or positive principle - [Taoism]), 纸 (zhǐ) Paper, 贵 (guì) Expensive (honorable). 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 advanced 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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