BTW, I noticed a mistake just now, where I had the reading of 自業自得 as じぎょうじとく rather than the correct じごうじとく. That’s typical, for yojijukugo to have readings you don’t really expect. Sorry about that.
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I had never heard of yojijukugo but of course I immediately fell in love. Thank you kind stranger
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Wow…
Well I saw the term “yojijukugo” before (by accident on jisho.org), but I was not aware that these are (very often) idiomatic proverbs.
This is kind of amazing and beautiful… but I get a cold shower when I look at the readings… I mean HOW THE HELL will I ever be able to read this 
On the other hand this is so typical for Japanese: It is very hard, but it has a good structure.
(If you read a text and there are exactly four kanji that make absolutely no sense, you will know that this must be a proverb… at least you know what this thing is, that you don’t know)
~T 
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These are so wonderful!
Thank you!
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Wow…
How does “a thousand oceans a thousand mountains” mean “sly old fox”? I wonder how this came to be…
Until I stumbled on this I thought you were doing a list of obvious/logical 4-part jukugo… But I see that’s not the case.
Wow, you continue to astound me with interesting knowledge!
(You don’t happen to know the etymological story behind that one, or any of the others, do you? If you did I’d be interested with that under another “details” flag.)
Crazy.
My guess is because the fox is old enough to have travelled a thousand oceans/seas and mountains.
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@anon20839864 - for future levels 61-65, maybe? ;D
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Nice one @Leebo - for future kanji kentei tests, learning yojijukuko is the most efficient way of practicing my writing, so with that in mind, I’ll definitely be going through the WK levels I’ve already completed and writing out the yojijukugo 
I spent a little time learning some idioms earlier this year and practiced using them with Japanese friends etc … certainly appreciate the rating system of how often they’re used … as I found it very hit and miss with the ones that appealed to me being known by my Japanese friends.
Anyway, just wanted to say cheers.
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Yess, yojijukugo are a lot of fun to write out and look up the meanings and stories for. I’ll have to go through this list more later. Disappointed that 悪戦苦闘 didn’t make the list but at least my favourite 七転八起 is represented.
I was curious too so I looked it up here. Apparently it comes from a saying that a snake that lives a thousand years in the sea and a thousand in the mountains becomes a dragon 
Basically someone who has a huge amount of life experience and knowledge (but with negative connotations thus why it gets translated to ‘sly fox’ I suppose)
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Yeah, another translation I found was “crazy like a fox”. Just in case it wasn’t clear that the “fox” aspect was idiomatic in the English translation.
Sly fox I get but I’m confused where they got the crazy part?
Are you unfamiliar with that idiom?
No, I know it. But I don’t really see how it matches the dictionary definition of this phrase? Unless there’s a usage of it I’m not getting? I don’t think of someone being “crazy like a fox” as being particularly knowledgeable about anything.
It’s the same as the sly part.
These aren’t one-to-one translations, they’re idioms that cover the same territory.
Also, the explanations I see for 海千山千 involve being original in some way. So people think it’s crazy but it’s actually clever (the meaning of “crazy like a fox”)
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Hmm well translating from one idiom to another is inherently a difficult task in the first place, I suppose.
Edit: ah, I see. I didn’t think of it that way. Interesting. (I’m currently taking a semantics class and I can’t seem to turn off this constant analysis mode 
)
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You’re welcome! You’ve encountered a few on WK so far, 悪因悪果, 中途半端, and 一夫多妻. Soon you’ll be getting to 無我夢中 and 一生懸命, and much later on you’ll get to 呉越同舟.
(I think that’s all of the yojijukugo on WK, but please let me know if I forgot any)
And just to clarify something, even though the word 四字熟語 literally means “4 character compound word,” it has two meanings. There is a linguistic meaning that covers any 4 character compounds. Then there is the common usage that we are discussing here, where the 4 characters have to hold some kind of idiomatic or proverb-esque meaning.
So things like 四十二階 and 第一印象 and 消化不良 are not considered yojijukugo by the general public, because they just “do what they say on the tin.”
However, if you take the Kanji Kentei, it’s possible to see words like that in the yojijukugo section, because they are using the linguistic definition.
As such, 四字熟語 is itself both a yojijukugo in the literal sense, and not one in the common sense.
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Would you really consider 一夫多妻 idiomatic though? It seems pretty literal to me. Or were you just using the linguistic meaning when saying which yojijukugo were on WaniKani?
I’m just going by which ones are listed on the yojijukugo websites. 一夫多妻 is, even though I agree that it’s on the literal side of the equation. But I think what does it is that, for instance, 一夫 is not a word on its own. So its inclusion in this is idiomatic. You couldn’t construct this 4 character word from knowing smaller words.
But the other compounds can be broken down into basically being combos of other words that just happen to add up to 4.
Ones that are generally considered yojijukugo can be like that too, but if they have a proverb vibe, they can then get away with it.
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The first ones I ever encountered were back when I was learning Chinese - just happened to notice them because they’re on the last page of my Chinese dictionary, and have definitions so long they caught my eye.
Sadly, they don’t seem to exist in Japanese, but here they are anyway (albeit written in the equivalent Japanese kanji, because ain’t noone gonna install Chinese encoding just for one forum thread)
坐吃山空 = sit and eat and do nothing, and your whole fortune will vanish
坐山觀虎斗 = sit on top of the mountain to watch the fight between two lions
And yeah, I know that second one is five. Actually, I’ve got no idea what it even means.
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That’s an interesting way of looking at it. Seems like a reasonable guideline to me.
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Also, I imagine that just like with grammar changing, interpretations of yojijukugo could change over time too. If you polled the public on “is this a yojijukugo,” you might get varying percentages by age demographic.
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