井底之蛙 jǐng dǐ zhī wā
A frog at the bottom of a well owns a perfect circle of sky.
The short answer
井底之蛙 is the frog at the bottom of a well, perfectly proud of its circle of sky: the idiom for a narrow view that mistakes itself for the whole picture.
The story
Zhuangzi's Autumn Floods stages a conversation: a frog living in a broken well boasts to a visiting turtle from the Eastern Sea. The well, the frog explains, is a kingdom — a place to leap along the rim, rest in hollow bricks, and command a full circle of sky. The turtle, politely, tries to describe the ocean: a thousand li does not measure its breadth; the Flood of Yao could not raise it.
The frog's jaw hangs. The chapter's larger point is that all of us are frogs until something vast arrives — the sea exists, and our wells do too.
What it means today
井底之蛙 names the small-world expert: the company that thinks its industry is the economy, the city that thinks its habits are the culture, anyone whose feed confirms that everyone agrees. The offense is not smallness — wells are cozy — but the pride.
The idiom pairs naturally with its cure: 见世面, to see the world. Saying 你真是井底之蛙 is rude; saying 我以前也是井底之蛙 is one of the most likable sentences in Chinese.
How to use it
Typical shape: 出去走走过才知道，自己以前真是井底之蛙, “only after traveling did I see I'd been a frog at the bottom of a well”.
In use
2 examples只看一个消息来源，很容易变成井底之蛙。
Read one news source only, and it's easy to become a frog at the bottom of a well.
第一次出国我才知道自己是井底之蛙。
Only on my first trip abroad did I learn I had been a well-bottom frog.
The characters
Explore individuallyIndividual character meanings do not always explain the meaning of the whole word.
This guide is original Dengdeng editorial content, offered under CC BY-SA 4.0. The linked dictionary entries adapt CC-CEDICT under the same license.