To astonish everyone after a long silence
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 king had spent three years drinking and issuing no orders, until a courtier put a riddle to him: there is a bird that has not flown or sung in three years — what bird is it? The king answered that it would not fly for three years, but once it flew it would reach the sky, and once it sang it would startle everyone. Then he got to work.
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.
一鸣惊人 is pronounced yī míng jīng rén and means to astonish everyone after a long silence. Literally it says "one call and it startles the world" — 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. A king had spent three years drinking and issuing no orders, until a courtier put a riddle to him: there is a bird that has not flown or sung in three years — what bird is it? The king answered that it would not fly for three years, but once it flew it would reach the sky, and once it sang it would startle everyone. Then he got to work.
yī míng jīng rén. 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.
一 (yī) One (single), 鸣 (míng) Cry (chirp - call of animals), 惊 (jīng) Surprise (startle - alarm - scared), 人 (rén) Person (people). 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.
Rebuild 一鸣惊人 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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