成语

Today Guo Juan had a question and answer session for her Audio Lessons. (It seems I am the only one who asks questions, which is great for me. Maybe eventually more people will find out about it and it will no longer be free personal lessons for me.) After answering my questions in the session, she ended up taking suggestions for new lectures and reading off her already long to do lecture list.

We were chatting afterwards and I mentioned that she has so much on her to do list. "We're already on the tiger," she replied. Oooh... it must be a 成语 (chéng yǔ). I asked her if it was, and got this:

骑虎难下 (qí hǔ nán xià)

Breakdown:
骑     qí        to ride (an animal or bike); to sit astride
虎     hǔ       tiger
难     nán     difficult (to...); problem; difficulty; difficult; not good
下     xià      under; second (of two parts); next (week, etc.); lower; below; underneath; down(wards); to decline; to go down; latter

What a great expression, eh? I like it even more than I otherwise would because I already knew all of the words. (Although I must admit that I would not have recognized the characters 虎 and 难.) Also, I realized that I now actually know (from other contexts) both of the characters 成 and 语, so now that makes sense.

成     chéng   finish; complete; accomplish; become; turn into; win; succeed; one tenth
语     yǔ        dialect; language; speech