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无边落木萧萧下

無邊落木蕭蕭下
wúbiānluòmùxiāoxiāoxià
phrase

Meanings

  1. 1 boundless falling leaves rustle down
  2. 2 an autumn scene of endless drifting leaves
  3. 3 (lit.) limitless fallen-wood rustle-rustle descends

Examples

秋风起，无边落木萧萧下，令人感伤。
Qiūfēng qǐ, wúbiān luòmù xiāoxiāo xià, lìng rén gǎnshāng.
The autumn wind rises, boundless leaves rustle down — it stirs melancholy.
他用无边落木萧萧下形容这凋零的景象。
Tā yòng wúbiān luòmù xiāoxiāo xià xíngróng zhè diāolíng de jǐngxiàng.
He described the withered scene as 'boundless falling leaves rustling down.'

Tips

history
From Du Fu's (杜甫, Tang) 《登高》: 无边落木萧萧下，不尽长江滚滚来。(Boundless falling leaves rustle down; the unending Yangtze rolls on.) Written in 767 during Du Fu's exile in Kuizhou, the poem is often called the greatest 七律 (seven-syllable regulated verse) in Chinese literature for its parallelism and imagery.
usage
落木 is Tang-era usage for 落叶 (falling leaves) — you won't hear it in modern speech outside of literary reference. 萧萧 (xiāoxiāo) = the sound of wind in leaves, a reduplicative onomatopoeia. Paired with 不尽长江滚滚来.

Stroke Order

无 wú
边 biān
落 luò
木 mù
萧 xiāo
下 xià