自相矛盾 (Zì xiāng máodùn)

[Daimashin]

自相矛盾 (Zì xiāng máodùn) - To contradict oneself.

Literally means - Show spear and shield

Once upon a time there was a weapons merchant. One day he goes to the market to sell his weapons, he brought out a spear and claimed that it's the sharpest spear ever made and can penetrate any type of shield. Among the crowd was one nosy guy, he said, "Doesn't look that impressive to me." The merchant then replied, "Oh, nevermind the spear then, let me show you this shield instead." The merchant put away the spear and told the guy that the shield is the strongest there was and no spear could ever hope to break it. So the nosy guy thought and asked, "Since you claim that the spear is the sharpest and the shield the strongest so what happens when the spear hits the shield?" The merchant panicked and didn't know the answer and had to leave in embarassment.

自相矛盾 (Zì xiāng máodùn) is used to describe when someone's actions contradict what he/she said.

Example:

"刚才你有说乱丢拉级是不對， 你現在自己又丟。 你這樣不就是「自相矛盾」？"

[pandandesign]

Yes, I have learned this 成语 when I was young. I think it also means ambiguous about certain things, which action and verbally spoken are two different things. It is quite a nice short story.

[linguaholic]

Wow, interesting! I am wondering how you came up with the literal translation though. I do agree that 矛 isolated means Spear and 盾 isolated means Spear. But how about the other two characters? As far as I know 自 means self (what is more is that zi was originally a pictogram for nose) and 相 generally means "mutually". So how did you get it to mean "show"? is that maybe a compound word of 自 and 相 together (自相）？

[Daimashin]

Wow, interesting! I am wondering how you came up with the literal translation though. I do agree that 矛 isolated means Spear and 盾 isolated means Spear. But how about the other two characters? As far as I know 自 means self (what is more is that zi was originally a pictogram for nose) and 相 generally means "mutually". So how did you get it to mean "show"? is that maybe a compound word of 自 and 相 together (自相）？

I missed "自" in the translation. It's actually Self Show Spear Shield. As you know, one word in Chinese has many meanings. "相" in this context means to reveal, to show. This can be compared to "相親" which is to see, or to reveal oneself to another gender which actually means a blind date.

I hope I cleared it up because sometimes Chinese words have meanings that are hard to explain in English. You'll understand through experience with the language.

[linguaholic]

I completely understand. I just did not know that 相 can also mean to show / reveal. I am well aware that chinese characters can have plenty of different meanings according to the context. In Classical Chinese for instance, one of the most important characters was 之 and it has more than seven different meanings. Another important character at that time was 為. In our classical Chinese book, this character has 16 different meanings in the second tone, and some more meanings in the 4th tone. I might start a new thread to let you know more about the use of 之 and 為 in Classical Chinese.

[Daimashin]

After thinking about it, I have finally found the words I was looking for. "自相" means to expose oneself Expose is the keyword here, I knew something doesn't feel right before.

[linguaholic]

That makes much more sense to me now. Thank you for clarifying this!

regards