刻舟求剑 kè zhōu qiú jiàn
Mark the moving boat, dive for the sunken sword — rules that outlive their moment.
The short answer
刻舟求剑 means to notch the side of a moving boat to mark where your sword fell in — then dive at the notch. It mocks methods that ignore the fact that circumstances have changed.
The story
The Lüshi Chunqiu, a Warring States anthology, tells of a man from Chu crossing a river when his sword slipped from its sheath into the water. Unhurried, he pulled out a knife and cut a notch in the gunwale where the sword went down. “This is where it fell,” he told the boat.
When the boat docked, he dived into the water from under the notch. The text's point was legal philosophy — laws, like notches, are made for the moment they fit; cling to them when the current has moved and you retrieve nothing — but the image has a life of its own.
What it means today
刻舟求剑 is the idiom for mismatched solutions: a company repeating last decade's strategy in this decade's market, a parent parenting a teenager as if he were seven, anyone using “this is how we've always done it” as an argument.
The mark on the boat was accurate once. Accuracy at time zero is not the question; the river is.
How to use it
Typical shape: 市场变了，老办法就是刻舟求剑, “the market has changed; the old method is a notch on a moving boat”.
In use
2 examples市场早就变了，还用五年前的策略，简直是刻舟求剑。
The market changed long ago — still using a five-year-old strategy is notching a moving boat.
孩子长大了，你不能总按老规矩管他，那样是刻舟求剑。
The child has grown — governing him by old rules is carving the boat and diving where the mark was.
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.