叶落归根 — Chinese idiom
叶落归根
yè luò guī gēn
Traditional: 葉落歸根
Meaning
- a falling leaf returns to the roots ; everything has its ancestral home
- In old age, an expatriate longs to return home.
Character by character
- 叶yèleaf, page; surname
- 落luòto fall, to drop; surplus, net income
- 归guīto return, to go back; to return to, to revert
- 根gēnroot, basis, foundation
Idioms sharing a character
- 一叶知秋 yī yè zhī qiū
- 一叶障目 yī yè zhàng mù
- 有枝有叶 yǒu zhī yǒu yè
- 根深叶茂 gēn shēn yè mào
- 梵册贝叶 fàn cè bèi yè
- 粗枝大叶 cū zhī dà yè
- 落叶归根 luò yè guī gēn
- 叶公好龙 Yè Gōng hào lóng
- 金枝玉叶 jīn zhī yù yè
- 一落千丈 yī luò qiān zhàng
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.