Free Chinese learning, tailored for you! This series highlights idioms and proverbs, useful in many contexts. Let’s explain 「弦外之意」 and how it’s used.
Introducing the idiom 「弦外之意」: its meaning and how to use it are provided below.
Strings: The silk threads on a musical instrument that produce sound. A metaphor for the implied meaning, that is, the meaning indirectly revealed in the words rather than stated explicitly.
The Mandarin pronunciation of this idiom is :
xián wài zhī yì
while its Cantonese pinyin is :
yin4 ngoi6 ji1 yi3
Chinese idioms are incredibly numerous, each carrying a special meaning and usage. This variety is a great reason to study them, and we hope these tools make that easier for you.
