Chinese idiom · 成语
一鳞半爪
Meaning
One scale, half a claw; fragmented glimpse.
Character by character
Origin and story
Literary analogyA dragon partly hidden in clouds supplies the image: a visible scale or claw reveals only a fragment of the whole creature. The related wording 一鳞半甲 occurs in Gao Zhongwu's Tang anthology Zhongxing Jianqi Ji, in a judgment of Su Huan's poetry. It suggests a trace of the qualities of the earlier poet Chen Zi'ang, rather than describing an actual dragon sighting.
The exact form 一鳞半爪 is attested in Ye Tingguan's Qing Oubo Yuhua, volume 5. Discussing a writer's scattered surviving poems, he describes the few collected volumes as only fragments of a much larger body of work. The expression therefore suits incomplete evidence, surviving scraps, or a very limited glimpse.
Sources and further reading
In everyday life
仅凭这几封旧信，我们只能了解那段往事的一鳞半爪。
These few old letters let us glimpse only fragments of what happened then.
Emphasizes incomplete knowledge or surviving fragments, not a full account.