骇人听闻
hài rén tīng wén · HSK 7
shocking
📰 骇 frighten + 人 people + 听 listen + 闻 hear = news that frightens all who hear it
A four-character idiom built from 骇 (to startle) + 人 (people) + 听闻 (what is heard). Literally describes a report so dreadful it shocks everyone who hears it, hence shocking or horrifying.
人 — pictograph of a standing person
人 is a pictograph showing a person viewed from the side, with two strokes representing the legs and torso of a standing human. In oracle bone script it clearly depicted a figure leaning slightly forward. The meaning has remained 'person' or 'human' throughout its history.
听 — mouth 口 + axe 斤 (simplified from 聽)
The traditional form 聽 combined 耳 (ear) with 王, 十, 目, and 心, depicting attentive listening with ear, eyes, and heart. The modern simplified 听 uses 口 (mouth) plus the phonetic 斤 (jīn), a much later shorthand. Despite the 'mouth' component, the meaning 'to listen, hear' was inherited from 聽.
闻 — gate 門 (phonetic) + ear 耳
Originally a pictograph of a person cupping a hand to the ear to listen, later restructured as a semantic-phonetic compound: 耳 (ear) gives the meaning and 門 (gate) supplies the sound. The core sense 'to hear' extended to 'news' and 'to smell', since both involve perceiving something from a distance.