They are often referred to as Chinese idioms or four-character idioms; however, they are not the only idioms in Chinese.
Chengyu are mostly derived from .
The meaning of a chengyu usually surpasses the sum of the meanings carried by the four characters, as chengyu are often intimately linked with the myth, story or historical fact from which they were derived. As such, chengyu do not follow the usual grammatical structure and syntax of the modern Chinese spoken language, and are instead highly compact and synthetic.
Chengyu in isolation are often unintelligible to modern Chinese, and when students in China learn chengyu in school as part of the Classical curriculum, they also need to study the context from which the chengyu was born. Often the four characters reflect the moral behind the story rather than the story itself.
For example, the phrase "" [] literally means "break the woks and sink the boats."
It was based on a historical account where General Xiang Yu ordered his troops to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" policy. Similar phrases are known in the West, such as "burning bridges" or "Crossing the Rubicon". This particular idiom cannot be used in a losing scenario because the story behind it does not describe a failure.
Another example is "" [] which literally means ''melon field, under the plums''. It is an idiom that has a deeper meaning that implies suspicious situations. It is derived from an excerpt from a poem from the Han Dynasty. The poem contains two phrases "lang|zh|瓜田不納履，李下不整冠" [] which describe a code of conduct that says "Don't adjust your shoes in a melon field and don't tidy your hat under the plum trees" in order to avoid suspicion of stealing. The literal meaning of the idiom is impossible to understand without the background knowledge of the origin of the phrase. However, some idioms such as "" which means to lay one's self open to criticism, and "" are so widely misunderstood that their literal meaning are used despite their original meaning.
However, that is not to say that all chengyu are born of an oft-told fable; indeed, chengyu which are free of metaphorical nuances pervade amidst the otherwise contextually-driven aspect of vernacular Chinese. An example of this is , which refers to an individual who cannot be trusted despite what he says, or essentially a deceitful person. The idiom itself is not derived from a specific occurrence from which a moral may be explicitly drawn; instead, it is succinct in its original meaning and would likely be intelligible to an individual learned in formal written Chinese. Note that the only classical-vernacular discrepancy present in this chengyu lies in the fact that the character '''''' is no longer used as a verb in modern Chinese.
Chinese examples
The following three examples show that the meaning of the idiom can be totally different by only changing one character.
* : "One day, a thousand autumns."
**Usage/Moral: implies rapid changes; one day equals a thousand years
* : "One day, a thousand miles."
**Usage/Moral: implies rapid progress; traveling a thousand miles in a day
* : "One day, three autumns."
**Usage/Moral: greatly missing someone; one day feels as long as three years
Other examples in Chinese:
*
Japanese examples
Four-character idiom is a common technique to make a memorizable phrase or idiom. In , the term itself is a four-character idiom: it is autological. Many of these idioms were adopted from their Chinese counterparts and have the same or similar meaning as in Chinese. The term refers to an idiom that comes from a specific text as the source. As such, the overwhelming majority of comes from accounts of history written in classical Chinese. Some example idioms:
* : "As if there were nobody beside ."
**Source: Liezhuan from Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian''
**Originally: Acting with impunity as though no one is around.
* : "Start, Continue, Change, Conclusion"
**Source: Traditional structure for composing Tang poetry.
* : "Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon"
**Source: Folk
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