梁上君子
liáng shàng jūn zǐ
a thief, a burglar (jocular)
Character by character
梁liáng
beam
beam
上shàng
on
on
君jūn
noble
noble
子zǐ
man
man
Example
昨天夜里楼里来了一位“梁上君子”，三楼的邻居家丢了一台电脑。
A “gentleman on the beam” paid our block a visit last night: the neighbours on the third floor lost a computer.
Tone: neutral.
Usage and origin
From the History of the Later Han: one night the official 陈寔 noticed a thief hiding on a roof beam in his house, called his sons and grandsons and told them that wrongdoers are not necessarily bad by nature but grow bad by habit, “like the gentleman on the beam”. The thief threw himself down from the beam and begged forgiveness, and 陈寔 sent him away with two bolts of silk. Today a wry, polite word for a thief, often in quotation marks.
Learn this in Lesson 193 · HSK 7–9: 一桩刑事案 (How a criminal case moves)
A dialogue, a reading, word cards with audio and a drill that uses it, in Learn Chinese with Bao. The first lessons of every level are free.
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