说来话长 — Chinese idiom
说来话长
shuō lái huà cháng
Traditional: 說來話長
Meaning
- start explaining and it's a long story ; complicated and not easy to express succinctly
Character by character
- 说shuōto speak, to say; to scold, to upbraid
- 来láito arrive, to come, to return; in the future, late
- 话huàtalk, speech; language, dialect
- 长chánglong, lasting; to excel in
Idioms sharing a character
- 二话不说 èr huà bù shuō
- 但说无妨 dàn shuō wú fáng
- 光说不做 guāng shuō bù zuò
- 光说不练 guāng shuō bù liàn
- 口说无凭 kǒu shuō wú píng
- 好说歹说 hǎo shuō dǎi shuō
- 无话可说 wú huà kě shuō
- 众说纷揉 zhòng shuō fēn róu
- 众说纷纭 zhòng shuō fēn yún
- 能说会道 néng shuō huì dào
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.