Idiom Explanation:
Qian Donkey skills are Poor.The metaphor is that some people are good at tricks, but their skills and abilities are very limited.
Pronunciation:
黔驴技穷
qián lǘ jì qióng
Origin book:
《三戒·黔之驴》：驴不胜怒，蹄之。虎因喜，计之曰：“技止此耳！”因跳踉大㘎，断其喉，尽其肉，乃去。
Origin Story:
A long time ago, there was no such animal as a donkey in Guizhou, China, and people didn’t know what a donkey looked like.
One day, a man brought a donkey from another place to Guizhou by boat. He put the donkey at the foot of the mountain, and the tiger in the mountain saw this huge thing barking from afar and thought, “Where is this monster from? It looks like it is very powerful, I’d better stay away from it to be safer!” After a while, the tiger observed that the donkey was just walking around every day, occasionally barking a few times! The tiger thought to himself, “This guy is so big, I don’t know what kind of skills he has.
Next, the tiger sneaked around to the donkey and touched it on purpose, and the donkey was very angry at being touched: “Why are you touching me? The tiger was so happy that he thought, “This donkey only kicks things, it’s not much at all!” So the tiger opened its mouth wide and tried to eat the donkey, who he thought was a god. I will kick you!” After hearing this, the tiger laughed and said, “All you can do is kick, but I can also eat!”
After saying this, the tiger roared and bit the donkey’s throat, ate all the donkey meat and left happily. Later, people interpreted the fable of the donkey being eaten by the tiger in Guizhou into the idiom of “Qian Donkey skills are Poor”, which is used to describe a person’s ideas and methods of doing things are very ordinary and have no special place.
Similar Idioms:
- 无计可施
- 束手无策
