一目十行

yīmùshíháng
idiom #60,251

Meanings

  1. 1 to take in ten lines at a glance
  2. 2 to read very rapidly
  3. 3 to skim through quickly

Examples

Tā dúshū yīmù shí háng, yī wǎnshang jiù kànwánle yī běn xiǎoshuō.
He reads ten lines at a glance — he finished a whole novel in one evening.
Kǎoshì shíjiān jǐn, zhǐ néng yīmù shí háng de liúlǎn tímù.
With exam time tight, all I could do was skim the questions at a glance.

Tips

history
From 《·》, which says of Emperor Jianwen of Liang that 读书 ("in reading he took in ten lines at once"). Song poet Liu Kezhuang later set the four-character form: 五更三点一目十行读书.
mistakes
here is háng ("line of text"), not xíng — the same reading as in 银行, 一行. Pronouncing it xíng is a common slip.

Stroke Order

shí
xíng