若有所失

ruòyǒusuǒshī
idiom

Meanings

  1. 1 as if having lost something
  2. 2 feeling distracted or unsettled
  3. 3 feeling empty

Examples

Tīngdào zhège xiāoxī hòu, tā ruòyǒusuǒshī de zuò zài nàlǐ.
After hearing the news, he sat there as if he had lost something.
Tā zhěng tiān ruòyǒusuǒshī, yí jù huà yě bù shuō.
She seemed lost in thought all day and didn't say a word.

Tips

history
Recorded in Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (《·》 Liáozhāi Zhìyì), where a character was 'restless as if having lost something, forgetting to eat or sleep' — describing the daze of an obsessed lover.
memory
Parse as (as if) + 有所 (have something) + (lost) — 'as if there were something lost.' The vagueness is the point: you can't say what's missing, only that something is.

Stroke Order

ruò
yǒu
suǒ
shī