I saw this four-character idiom in my building’s elevator the other day. It was really hard to figure out a meaning for it – my online search and linguistic skills are either declining or this was an exceptionally difficult and rare one.
文過飾非
문과식비
mun.gwa.sik.bi
Breaking down the individual hanja:
文 문 = 글월 letter, writing, sentence
過 과 = 지날 fut-part pass, elapse, spend [time]
飾 식 = 꾸밀 fut-part ornament, fabricate, affect, make, embellish
非 비 = 아닐 fut-part not be
Maybe literally, then, something like “[despite time] spent writing, [there is] no embellished effect” (?).
I searched a lot for a translation, and found nothing. I was having too much difficulty translating the one Korean definition I found. I tried a trick that sometimes works for these four-character idioms: you can put the idiom into googletranslate as Chinese instead of Korean. In this case, the meaning seems clear: “to pay lip service to.” I am not certain that the Korean usage of the idiom retains exactly the same meaning, but the Korean meaning given at naver’s dictionary is:
허물도 꾸미고 잘못도 꾸민다는 뜻으로, 잘못이 있음에도 불구(不拘)하고 뉘우침도 없이 숨길 뿐 아니라 도리어 외면하고 도리어 잘난 체함
It was taking me too long to try to figure out an idiomatic translation for this definition, but the gist seems to be in vein of “it is a mistake to try to hide ideas through embellishment, etc.” I’m not really confident, but it seems to semantically connect enough to the direct translation of the Chinese as to make me think that meaning applies to the Korean usage as well.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]