聪明绝顶 vs 绝顶聪明 (and almost all other idioms)

[alvinchang90]

Hi everyone, I have been speaking and writing Chinese for a long time, but recently I noticed (maybe realise too slow) that Chinese dramas have a trend to change the order of the words in the idiom.

Example of how I will use 聪明绝顶:

"这孩子样样精通, 连考试都每科满分, 真是聪明绝顶."

But in shows, they might change the order to 绝顶聪明:

"这孩子样样精通, 连考试都每科满分, 真是绝顶聪明."

Other example:

驾鹤归西 to 归西驾鹤

My question is:

1) If I change the order of words in the idiom, is my sentence still grammatically and officially correct? (For academic writing)

2) Should I stick back to original idiom?

3) If yes, can I change all the idiom's order of words?

Thanks!

[skylee]

Usually the meaning remains the same. But if you are not sure you might want to stick to the version you have learnt. I think this is true for any languages that one learns as a foreigner.

[Demonic_Duck]

Yeah, basically many Chengyu have multiple variations (it might be a change in the order of the characters, or one or more characters gets swapped for ones with similar meaning). Sometimes you can even swap one or two of the characters for antonyms, to get a chengyu with the opposite meaning. Still, unless you have seen a particular variation before (or your knowledge of classical Chinese is top-notch), it's best to stick to the forms you've seen used before.

 

As an example of how complex/annoying this can be, I used the chengyu “老幼咸宜” when chatting to a friend on WeChat, and she corrected it to “老幼皆宜”. I checked Pleco, and found that there were at least four variations:

 

“老幼咸宜” was in the Taiwan MoE dictionary, but none of my other dictionaries.

“老少皆宜” was in CC-CEDICT, but no others.

“老少咸宜” was in the MoE dictionary, CC-CEDICT, and also 汉语规范词典.

“老幼皆宜” was in none of the dictionaries, even though it was the one she instinctively corrected it to.

 

None of them were in the dedicated Chengyu dictionary (多功能成语词典).

[skylee]

My latest favourite is 禮崩樂壞, which I have used quite a lot lately.

"「禮壞樂崩」亦作「禮崩樂壞」、「禮廢樂崩」、「禮壞樂缺」、「禮樂崩壞」。"

https://www.moedict.tw/%E7%A6%AE%E5%A3%9E%E6%A8%82%E5%B4%A9