Idiom

[Andy-Ru]

Hi everyone!! Hope you're all well!! I was talking to my girlfriend this evening and she said this: 一鸣惊人.

I only have a vague idea what this means (i.e. singing like a bird??). Does anyone know a more definitive translation / description of what this saying means...?

Thanks

[skylee]

Take a look ->

http://www.chinese-tools.com/chinese/chengyu/dictionary/detail/28474.html

http://www.baidu.com/baidu?ie=gb2312&cl=3&ct=1048576&word=%D2%BB%C3%F9%BE%AA%C8%CB

become famous overnight

to amaze the world with a single brilliant feat; to become famous overnight;

[ABCinChina]

[yī míng jīng rén]

to amaze the world with a single brilliant feat (成语 saw); an overnight celebrity

Edit: Hmm, seems Skylee has already answered this one. I'm just testing out my brand new CEDICT dictionary and everything is looking great!

[cockneylad]

一鸣惊人 (yi1 ming2 jing1 ren2).

一鳴 = Tweet. 惊人 = to surprise / shock people. It comes from a story about a bird. An foriegn embassy presented a bird to Chinese emperor, saying that is a valuable bird which can sing very well. The king kept it for more then 10 years and the bird never made a tweet. The kind was annoyed and about to raise a war for this cheat. The bird then suddenly tweeted, that shocked everyone. This makes the proverb: 十年不鳴、一鳴驚人