Why are idioms mostly four words?

In ancient Chinese, word formation, two-character idioms, three-character writing, four-character poems, 50% to 70% regularity, 60% to 80% parallelism. From the Book of Songs and the Ancient History of China to the earliest three-character classics, hundreds of surnames and thousand-character writings, most of them are four-character, and the first, second and third episodes of Four-character Miscellaneous Words and Long Wen Whip Shadow are all four-character. It can be seen that four words are easy to grasp.

"Four-character case" is a common form of Chinese idioms and one of the favorite forms of Chinese users. Mr. Wang once pointed out that four syllables seem to have always been four syllables in Chinese, such as Baijia surname, Li, Long Wen whip shadow and so on. There is always a four-word banner in the pavilion, and the most popular idiom is also four words. Idioms are not all four-character cases, but most of them are four-character cases. There are three main reasons: first, the influence of The Book of Songs, the first four-character poem, has a great influence on later poems in terms of sentence pattern, rhythm and vocabulary, and now many idioms come from The Book of Songs; Second, other ancient literary works and papers, whose important structure is four sentences, many famous philosophical sentences are often used and become idioms; Third, the four words are powerful, catchy and general, so people like to use them, reuse them and pass them on endlessly.

Yi Ming: A member of the lecturer group who is not seriously ill/Jianyi Reading/Marathon enthusiast/WeChat platform: Yi Ming _isa.