来龙去脉
- Literal
- the dragon arriving, the vein departing
- Figurative
- The full story of a matter, from where it began through how it unfolded to how it ended up as it is; the whole chain of cause and effect, from start to finish.
Where does 来龙去脉 come from?
It comes from the vocabulary of geomancy (风水). Geomancers called a mountain range a "dragon" (龙) and its branches "veins" (脉), and to choose the site for a grave or a house they studied where the range came from and where it ran on to. The phrase is found in that sense in 《运甓记》, a Ming-dynasty play by Wu Qiurui, in praise of a good plot of land. From tracing the course of mountains it came to mean tracing the course of an affair: today it is the origin, development, and causes of something, told from beginning to end.
Source (出处): 吾丘瑞《运甓记·牛眠指穴》
How is 来龙去脉 used? Two examples
- 我刚开完会回来，谁能给我讲讲这件事的来龙去脉？
I've just come out of a meeting; can someone walk me through how this whole thing came about?
- 邻居两家闹矛盾，我听了半天才明白来龙去脉。
Two families next door have fallen out, and I had to listen for ages before I understood the whole backstory.
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