三顾茅庐 — Chinese idiom
三顾茅庐
sān gù máo lú
Traditional: 三顧茅廬
Meaning
- lit. to make three visits to the thatched cottage (allusion to an episode in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三国演义 (Sān guó Yǎn yì) in which Liu Bei 刘备 (Liú Bèi) recruits Zhuge Liang 诸葛亮 (Zhū gě Liàng) to his cause by visiting him three times)
- fig. to make earnest and repeated requests of sb
Character by character
- 三sānthree
- 顾gùto look back; to look at; to look after
- 茅máorushes, reeds, grass; surname
- 庐lúhut, cottage; the name of a mountain
Idioms sharing a character
- 一唱三叹 yī chàng sān tàn
- 一日三秋 yī rì sān qiū
- 一板三眼 yī bǎn sān yǎn
- 三下两下 sān xià liǎng xià
- 三五成群 sān wǔ chéng qún
- 三人成虎 sān rén chéng hǔ
- 三令五申 sān lìng wǔ shēn
- 三天两头 sān tiān liǎng tóu
- 三妻四妾 sān qī sì qiè
- 三姑六婆 sān gū liù pó
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.