Your Favorite 成语 (Chengyu) and 习语 (Idiom)

Some of the simple ones I have learnt are quite intriguing from a linguistic point of view like 七上八下 (qi1shang4ba1xia4) meaning "at sixes and sevens" although it means literally "seven up and eight down". Also 九牛一毛 (jiu3niu2yi1mao2) meaning "a drop in the ocean" but literally "one hair from nine cows". Similar conceptually to the English sayings although using different imagery.

My favorite chengyu are 空穴来风, because no one can figure out what it means ( http://gfcd.fltrp.com/guifan.asp ), and 莫名其妙 vs. 莫明其妙, which according to the 现代汉语规范词典 have slightly different meanings?! ( http://gfcd.fltrp.com/shiyong.asp ).

Hennig,

I dunno... Wenlin has it marked as a "f.e." fixed expression like other chengyu. I'm not sure if it makes the cut as a real chengyu or not, though there are certainly long ones lurking out there.

Regardless, it's a good expression :)

JohnB.,

that counts as a real Chengyu?

By the way: It is taught in here:

http://chinesepod.com/learnchinese/bargaining/

I personally like:

一分钱一分货 yī fēn qián yī fēn huò

(Very) literally: one piece of money, one piece of product, and more correctly, "you get what you pay for."

The characters are simple, and it's the sort of the expression you can use all the time.

Hey guys,

for the lazy ones among us and the less advanced, it would be really nice if you could also give the pinyin and a short explanation.

The thing with Chengyu is that they do not always use the most commonly used characters...Thanks

not necessarily a favourite but one I use very often.

一片迷蒙 (have I got the caracters right)

Remembered two more that I quite like, both similarly macabre:

兔死狐悲

and

得魚忘筌

城門失火，殃及池魚

*pretend edit button* "...and I thought it was a good one".

I know very few but I discovered this one fairly recently and it was a good one.

度日如年 - one day seems like a year

This has been mentioned before, but:

http://www.oneaday.org/archives.html

OKOK,

here you go:

画蛇添足

CEDICT:

huàshétiānzú

lit.: draw legs on a snake

ruin the effect by adding what is superfluous

走马观花

zǒu mǎ guān huā

lit: look at the flowers from the horses back

Superficiouly look at a lot of things

http://blogs.chinesepod.com/de/2007/03/12/auf-dem-gipfel-des-erfolgs-fluchtig-betrachtet/

Sorry I didn't write that sooner. The pinyin for mine:

1 ru4 xiang1 sui2 su2

2 bing1 dong4 san1 chi3 fei1 yi2 ri4 zhi1 han2

Explanation already provided. =)

And where is the pinyin and an explanation?

画蛇添足

走马观花 (learned that one from Anne. Anne, where are you???)