To profess a love you do not actually have
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.
Lord Ye of Chu filled his house with dragons — carved on the beams, painted on the walls, embroidered on his robes. A real dragon heard of his devotion and came to visit, putting its head through the window and its tail through the hall. Lord Ye ran for his life.
Source: 《新序》Xinxu, compiled by Liu Xiang, 1st century 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.
叶公好龙 is pronounced yè gōng hào lóng and means to profess a love you do not actually have. Literally it says "Lord Ye loves dragons" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《新序》Xinxu, compiled by Liu Xiang, 1st century BC. Lord Ye of Chu filled his house with dragons — carved on the beams, painted on the walls, embroidered on his robes. A real dragon heard of his devotion and came to visit, putting its head through the window and its tail through the hall. Lord Ye ran for his life.
yè gōng hào lóng. 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.
叶 (yè) Leaf (leaf-like - page), 公 (gōng) Public (official), 好 (hào) Good (well); Like, 龙 (lóng) Dragon (imperial). 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 叶公好龙 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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