愈演愈烈
- Literal
- the more it unfolds, the fiercer
- Figurative
- To keep escalating: a conflict, a controversy or a bad trend that, far from dying down, grows more intense all the time.
Where does 愈演愈烈 come from?
It does not come from a specific anecdote; it is a set phrase of written Chinese. 愈…愈… is the literary form of 越…越…, "the more…, the more…"; 演 means "to unfold, to evolve," as in 演变, and 烈 means "fierce, intense," as in 激烈 or 猛烈. Together they say that something grows more heated the further it goes. It is usually applied to bad things: disputes, price wars, rumors or bad habits, and it turns up constantly in the press. It should not be confused with 每况愈下, which says a situation is going from bad to worse; this one says something is gaining in intensity.
How is 愈演愈烈 used? Two examples
- 他们俩本来只是小争吵，结果愈演愈烈，最后谁也不理谁。
It started as a minor squabble between the two of them, but it kept escalating until they stopped speaking to each other.
- 这几年外卖平台之间的价格战愈演愈烈。
In recent years, the price war among food delivery platforms has grown fiercer and fiercer.
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.
