Idioms like 「東鱗西爪」 are key to mastering Chinese. Start from characters, climb to idioms, and explore them with this free resource.
This time, we present the Chinese idiom 「東鱗西爪」, with its definition and usage detailed below.
Originally it meant that when drawing a dragon, the dragon’s body was covered by clouds, with only a piece of dragon scale painted on the east side and a dragon claw exposed on the west side, but the whole dragon was not visible. A metaphor for fragmentary things.
The Mandarin pronunciation of this idiom is :
dōng lín xī zhǎo
while its Cantonese pinyin is :
dung1 leun4 sai1 jaau2
There’s no shortage of Chinese idioms, each offering unique meanings and ways to use them. This guide is here to assist you as you improve your understanding of the language.
