不亦乐乎
bù yì lè hū · HSK 7
fig. extremely
🎉 BOO-YEE-LAY-HOO! — sounds like a crowd roaring at a wild party
Confucius asked isnt that also a joy? Now used for doing anything to an absurd extreme — partying bu yi le hu means going wildly overboard.
不 — single pictograph; bird flying upward
Originally a pictograph in oracle bone script, traditionally interpreted as a bird flying up toward the sky and unable to come down, suggesting negation or refusal. Over time it became the standard negation word in Chinese, used before verbs and adjectives to mean 'not'.
亦 — person 大 with two dots marking armpits
亦 is a pictograph of a person (大) with two dots indicating the armpits, originally meaning 'armpit' — a sense later taken over by 腋. The character was borrowed phonetically to write the adverb meaning 'also' or 'likewise', which became its standard modern use.
乐 — stylized depiction of a wooden instrument with strings
Originally a pictograph of a wooden frame holding strings or bells, representing a musical instrument. The character first meant 'music' (read yuè), and by extension came to mean 'joy, happiness' (read lè), since music brings pleasure. The simplified form 乐 streamlines the older 樂.