千钧一发
- Literal
- a thousand jun hanging from a single hair
- Figurative
- A moment of extreme crisis when everything hangs by a thread; a situation so precarious that the slightest slip would bring disaster.
Where does 千钧一发 come from?
The phrase was crystallized by the great prose master Han Yu of the Tang dynasty. A "jun" (钧) was an ancient unit of weight equal to about thirty jin, so "a thousand jun" stood for an enormous load. In his letter to Minister Meng (Meng Jian) (《与孟尚书书》), Han Yu described the plight of Confucianism, besieged by Buddhism and Daoism, with the image of a weight of a thousand jun suspended from a single hair: "其危如一发引千钧" ("its peril is like a thousand jun pulled by a single strand of hair"). Should the hair snap, everything would come crashing down. From this comes the modern sense of any instant in which disaster is averted only by the narrowest of margins.
Source (出处): 《与孟尚书书》
How is 千钧一发 used? Two examples
- 就在千钧一发的时刻，消防员把孩子救了出来。
At the most critical moment, when everything hung by a thread, the firefighter pulled the child to safety.
- 比赛最后一秒，他投进了千钧一发的一球。
In the final second of the game, he sank a do-or-die shot just as everything hung by a thread.
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