To return something borrowed, undamaged
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.
Qin offered fifteen cities for Zhao's famous jade disc, then took the jade and said nothing about the cities. The envoy Lin Xiangru got it back into his hands by claiming it had a flaw to point out, then threatened to smash it and his own head against a pillar. He smuggled it home whole.
Source: 《史记》Records of the Grand Historian, c. 94 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.
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完璧归赵 is pronounced wán bì guī zhào and means to return something borrowed, undamaged. Literally it says "the jade returns to Zhao intact" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《史记》Records of the Grand Historian, c. 94 BC. Qin offered fifteen cities for Zhao's famous jade disc, then took the jade and said nothing about the cities. The envoy Lin Xiangru got it back into his hands by claiming it had a flaw to point out, then threatened to smash it and his own head against a pillar. He smuggled it home whole.
wán bì guī zhào. 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.
完 (wán) Finish (complete - entire - whole), 璧 (bì) [phonetic], 归 (guī) Return (group - come under), 赵 (zhào) Zhao ([surname]). 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.
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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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