hé​qīng​nán​sì

life is too short to wait

  • created sense approved 河清难俟/河清難俟 · hé​qīng​nán​sì · life is too short to wait — "Initial import from upstream dictionary"

    河清难俟 / 河清難俟

    hé​qīng​nán​sì

    life is too short to wait

    It takes too long to wait for something that is unlikely to happen; literally meaning it is hard to wait for the Yellow River to run clear. This idiom is based on the classical text [[左传|左傳|zuo3 zhuan4]], referring to the rare nature of the river clearing and the brevity of human life.

    河清 (literal) → 河清 · hé​qīng · rare event 难 (literal) → 难/難 · nán · difficult 俟 (literal) → 俟 · sì · to wait

    Changed: simplified, traditional, gloss, definition, pinyin, variant pinyin, variants, separable parts, decomposition

    created sense