Chinese idioms from the Dao De Jing
知雄守雌 (zhī xióng shǒu cí)
Reworked from chapter 28
知雄守雌 (zhī xióng shǒu cí), “know the male, keep to the female”, shortens the opening of chapter 28 of the Dao De Jing: know your strength, yet keep to softness.
Character by character
| 知 | zhī | to know |
|---|---|---|
| 雄 | xióng | the male |
| 守 | shǒu | to keep, to guard |
| 雌 | cí | female, yielding |
| 知雄守雌 | Knowing what strength is, yet choosing to stay soft and yielding instead of contending. | |
Where it comes from
The idiom is not in the text as such: it reworks the line 知其雄，守其雌.
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知其雄，守其雌，为天下溪。
Know masculinity, abide by femininity, be as the world's stream.
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为天下溪，常德不离，
Be as the world's stream, and the enduring virtue shall not fade,
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复归于婴儿。
ever returning to the newborn.
How the meaning moved
Chapter 28 opens: “Know masculinity, abide by femininity, be as the world's stream.” (知其雄，守其雌，为天下溪). The idiom drops the two 其, “its”, and keeps the four words that carry the sense. The same pattern comes back twice in the chapter: “Know whiteness, abide by darkness, be as the world's model” and “Know glory, abide by disgrace, be as the world's valley.”
雄 and 雌 are the male and the female of birds and beasts; in the book they stand for the strong, forward side and the yielding, quiet side. Whoever knows the first but keeps to the second is like a stream that the world's water runs down into, and the chapter says such a person keeps virtue and is “ever returning to the newborn.” Chapter 61 makes the same point with another pair of words: “The female always overcomes the male by stillness”.
Today 知雄守雌 is a literary phrase for someone who knows their own strength but stays modest and does not push, not out of weakness but because the soft position is the lasting one.
Using it today
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他实力最强，却懂得知雄守雌，从不在会上抢风头。
tā shí lì zuì qiáng, què dǒng de zhī xióng shǒu cí, cóng bù zài huì shàng qiǎng fēng tou.
He is the strongest of them, yet he knows how to keep to the soft side and never steals the limelight in meetings.
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太极拳讲究知雄守雌，以柔克刚。
tài jí quán jiǎng jiu zhī xióng shǒu cí, yǐ róu kè gāng.
Taijiquan is about knowing strength and keeping to softness, overcoming the hard with the soft.