chengyu
/t͡ʃʌŋˈjuː/noun
chengyu is a noun meaning “A certain kind of Chinese set phrase originating in Classical Chinese, typically four characters in length, and usually proverbial” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-H-E-N-G-Y-U, and it appears about once in every 63 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does chengyu mean?
noun
- 1
A certain kind of Chinese set phrase originating in Classical Chinese, typically four characters in length, and usually proverbial.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce chengyu?
- /t͡ʃʌŋˈjuː/
- /t͡ʃɛŋˈjuː/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is chengyu?
Chengyu appears about once in every 63 million words in written English, the 249,463rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Chengyu in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense certain kind of Chinese set phrase:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does chengyu come from?
From Mandarin 成語／成语 (chéngyǔ).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).