翻天覆地
- Literal
- to overturn heaven and upend the earth
- Figurative
- A huge change that transforms something from top to bottom; used for the deep turns a city, an industry or a life takes, and it usually sits in front of the word for "change."
Where does 翻天覆地 come from?
The oldest form on record is the variant 天翻地覆, in the sixth of the "Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute" that the Tang poet Liu Shang wrote in the voice of Cai Wenji, the Han scholar carried off north as a captive of the Xiongnu: "heaven overturns and earth is upended — who can know it? Now I look south and see the Big Dipper." For someone torn out of her world, even the stars have moved. The hyperbole stuck: two verbs of overturning (翻 and 覆) applied to the two ends of the world. The four characters are said in either order, but the two orders have divided the labor: 翻天覆地 shows up mainly in the press, in front of 变化 or 改变, for sweeping transformations; the uproar of someone leaving a place in disarray is more often 天翻地覆.
Source (出处): 刘商《胡笳十八拍》
How is 翻天覆地 used? Two examples
- 这十年，我们村发生了翻天覆地的变化。
Over these ten years, our village has changed beyond recognition.
- 手机支付给人们的消费习惯带来了翻天覆地的改变。
Mobile payment has completely upended the way people spend.
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