黔驴技穷

黔驢技窮

qiánlǘ-jìqióng

idiom #28,282

Meanings

1 to have exhausted one's limited bag of tricks
2 at the end of one's rope (lit. the Guizhou donkey has run out of skills)

Characters

Guizhou province (archaic name)

skill; technique

exhausted; used up; poor

Examples

HSK 4

他在辩论中黔驴技穷，只好承认失败。

Tā zài biànlùn zhōng qiánlǘ-jìqióng, zhǐhǎo chéngrèn shībài.

He ran out of tricks in the debate and had to admit defeat.

HSK 7-9

经过几轮谈判，对方已经黔驴技穷，无计可施。

Jīngguò jǐ lún tánpàn, duìfāng yǐjīng qiánlǘ-jìqióng, wújìkěshī.

After several rounds of negotiations, the other side had exhausted all their tricks with nothing left to try.

Tips

history

This idiom comes from Liu Zongyuan's Tang dynasty essay 'The Donkey of Guizhou' (黔之驴). A donkey was brought to Guizhou (where no donkeys had existed), and a tiger feared it until it realized the donkey's only skill was kicking - then ate it.

Stroke Order

黔 qián

驴 lǘ

技 jì

穷 qióng