zhǐ​lù​wéi​mǎ

to deliberately misrepresent

指鹿为马 指鹿為馬 zhǐ​lù​wéi​mǎ
to deliberately misrepresent
(idiom) Calling a deer a horse; to deliberately misrepresent something, confuse right and wrong, or distort the facts. This refers to a historical story where the Qin dynasty official 赵高 zhào​gāo tested his subordinates by claiming a deer was a horse to see who would dare to disagree.

Frequency

Written text
0.218 per million

Cross-References

Variant of

Antonym

Synonym

Referenced by

Sources

Frequency data
BCC Corpus (BLCU)