Free Chinese learning, tailored for you! This series highlights idioms and proverbs, useful in many contexts. Let’s explain 「斷章取意」 and how it’s used.
We’re presenting the idiom 「斷章取意」 this time—its explanation and use are detailed below.
Duan: to cut off; Zhang: a piece of music is called a chapter. It means to take the meaning of a paragraph or sentence in isolation, regardless of the content of the entire article or conversation. Refers to the quotation not being consistent with the original intention. Same as “taking things out of context”.
The Mandarin pronunciation of this idiom is :
duàn zhāng qǔ yì
while its Cantonese pinyin is :
tyun5 jeung1 cheui2 yi3
With so many Chinese idioms, each holding diverse meanings and uses, there is much to explore. These materials are designed to support your Chinese language studies.
