情不自禁
- Literal
- the feeling does not restrain itself
- Figurative
- When feeling gets the better of you and the reaction slips out: laughing, crying, or hugging someone without being able to help it.
Where does 情不自禁 come from?
There is no anecdote behind it that can be stated with confidence; the force of the idiom lies in how it is put together. 情 is what a person feels; 禁, read jīn here, means "to bear, to hold back" — the same 禁 as in 禁不住 — not "to forbid." 自禁 means "to hold oneself back," and 不 negates it: the emotion spills over on its own, and the person feeling it never quite manages to stop it. It usually stands in front of a verb of physical reaction: bursting out laughing, breaking into tears, starting to applaud.
How is 情不自禁 used? Two examples
- 看到孩子上台的样子，她情不自禁地哭了。
Seeing her son walk onstage, she couldn't help bursting into tears.
- 听到这个消息，我情不自禁地笑出了声。
When I heard the news, a laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
In Wanyu, all 400 chengyu have audio on every sentence, and you can save them to your decks and review them with spaced repetition. Free.
