相形见绌

Origin and story

In chapter 14 of the Qing novel Qi Lu Deng, Tan Shaowen has been drifting through life for years. A rebuke stirs his conscience, and comparison with his former schoolmate Lou Pu exposes how far he has fallen behind. The narrator uses the exact expression for that uncomfortable contrast.

Another Qing novel, Twenty Years of Strange Happenings Witnessed, uses the variant 相形见拙 about anxiety over official status. These are literary attestations, not a single founding episode. The modern idiom means appearing inferior when compared with someone or something else; the weakness becomes especially noticeable through the comparison.