鹤立鸡群
hè lì jī qún · HSK 7
a crane in a flock of chicken
🦤🐔 鹤(crane) + 立(stands) + 鸡(chicken) + 群(flock) = crane standing in a chicken flock
Literally a tall crane among short chickens, so it labels anyone who stands out as obviously better than everyone around them. The four characters stack as crane-stand-chicken-group.
立 — person standing on ground (大 over 一)
Pictograph of a person standing with arms outstretched on the ground line below. The original oracle bone form clearly shows a frontal human figure planted on the earth. The core meaning 'to stand' extended to 'establish, set up, erect.'
鸡 — 又 (hand) + 鸟 (bird), simplified from 雞
Originally written 雞, a phono-semantic compound: 鳥 'bird' gives the meaning, while 奚 supplied the sound. The simplified form 鸡 replaces 奚 with 又 (a hand) as a sign component and uses the simplified bird radical 鸟. The character has always meant 'chicken'.
群 — 君 jūn (phonetic) + 羊 sheep (semantic)
群 is a phono-semantic compound. The 羊 (sheep) component gives the meaning — sheep naturally gather in flocks — while 君 (jūn) supplies the sound. From the literal sense of a flock, the meaning broadened to any group, crowd, or cluster of people or things.