Talk:風馬牛不相及

Wind, Horses and Cattle have nothing to do one with the other

There is a commonly-told way to understand this phrase which divorces 風 from the meaning "in heat" and has us understand that the phrase means that just as wind, horses and cattle are topics of conversation irrelevant one to the other, so to is whatever other two things that are being discussed in the context of a given conversation. I would suggest adding that information here in some capacity if this can be shown to have any prevalence as a 'folk etymology'. Going based off my experience in China and Taiwan, I would say it has some degree of prevalence. Geographyinitiative (talk) 04:36, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

The attempt to give the literal meaning as "|lit=a horse and a cattle cannot be attracted to each other when in heat" seems wrong based on expert translation. 相及 is not about attraction, but instead about the distance between the cows and horses in Qi and Chu. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Hahaha, yeah, this doesn't seem to be a chengyu about the infeasibility of horse-on-cow love! haha (but that was the way I was misunderstanding it before I started working on this page) --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Apparently some want to read 風 as 走失 --Geographyinitiative (talk) 05:58, 21 January 2020 (UTC)