Chinese idiom · 成语
丧心病狂
Meaning
Lost heart, crazed illness; utterly deranged.
Character by character
Origin and story
Literary usageThe two components have separate classical histories. Sang xin appears in the Zuo Commentary, where unusual emotional behavior at a banquet is interpreted as loss of the inner spirit. Bing kuang appears in the Book of Han's account of Wei Xuancheng, who feigns disorder to avoid inheriting a title contrary to his father's wishes. Those passages do not contain the combined idiom.
The exact combination is recorded in Fan Rugui's denunciation of Qin Hui, preserved in the History of Song and other Song-related records. It became an extremely strong condemnation of outrageous or cruel behavior. Its conventional moral use should not be confused with a medical diagnosis.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
电影里的反派为了掩盖罪行，竟然放火烧村，真是丧心病狂。
The villain in the film burns down a village to conceal his crimes—an utterly monstrous act.
Very strong condemnation of cruelty; not a clinical label or casual synonym for eccentric.