qīng​chū​yú​lán

the pupil surpasses the teacher

青出于蓝 青出於藍 qīng​chū​yú​lán
the pupil surpasses the teacher
Literally meaning that indigo dye comes from the indigo plant but is bluer than the plant itself; used to describe a student who surpasses their teacher or a younger generation that excels beyond its predecessors.

Frequency

Written text
0.238 per million

Cross-References

Synonym

Sources

Frequency data
BCC Corpus (BLCU)