Guànyòngyǔ 慣用語 ( Idioms and Common Sayings)

At present, there is no consensus among Sinologists neither on the classification of idiomatic units, nor on the Chinese equivalent for the term ‘idiom’. Despite the more precise and commonly adopted linguistic term ‘common sayings’, guànyòngyǔ 慣用語 are often conventionally translated into English as ‘idioms’. Semantically stable, but structurally flexible, these trisyllabic collocations constitute the second most numerous category of Chinese idiomatic units after chéngyǔ 成語.