喜出望外

Origin and story

Su Shi uses these exact words in a letter to his friend Li Zhiyi. He says they have been apart for eight years and that he had hardly expected another opportunity to see him. As he draws closer to the central region, Li’s letters arrive especially often, bringing happiness beyond what Su had hoped for.

The surviving letter gives the idiom a personal setting: renewed contact after a long separation. Here 望 means expectation or hope. The expression continued into later fiction as a ready way to describe delight at unexpectedly good news, especially when the outcome is better than someone had allowed themselves to anticipate.