To endure hardship to keep a purpose alive
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.
Goujian, King of Yue, was defeated by Wu and spent years in humiliating servitude. Back home he slept on firewood and hung a gall bladder above his seat, tasting its bitterness before every meal so he would never forget. Twenty years later he destroyed Wu.
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.
Want the stroke order for one of these? Each character links to its dictionary entry, which animates it.
卧薪尝胆 is pronounced wò xīn cháng dǎn and means to endure hardship to keep a purpose alive. Literally it says "sleep on brushwood, taste gall" — 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. Goujian, King of Yue, was defeated by Wu and spent years in humiliating servitude. Back home he slept on firewood and hung a gall bladder above his seat, tasting its bitterness before every meal so he would never forget. Twenty years later he destroyed Wu.
wò xīn cháng dǎn. 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.
卧 (wò) Lie (to crouch), 薪 (xīn) Fuel (salary), 尝 (cháng) Tastes (ever), 胆 (dǎn) Gall bladder (courage). 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.
Rebuild 卧薪尝胆 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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