Listen to this article · (info)

This audio file was created from the revision dated 2005-12-15, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (audio help)

More spoken articles

Three men make a tiger (Chinese: 三人成虎 ; Pinyin: sān rén chéng hǔ) is a Chinese proverb or four-character idiom. It refers to the idea that if an unfounded premise or urban legend is mentioned and repeated by many individuals, the premise will be erroneously accepted as the truth. This concept is analogous to communal reinforcement or the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum or appeal to the people. Image File history File links SanRenChengHu. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... December 15 is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Pinyin (Chinese: 拼音, pÄ«nyÄ«n) literally means join (together) sounds (a less literal translation being phoneticize, spell or transcription) in Chinese and usually refers to HànyÇ” PÄ«nyÄ«n (汉语拼音, literal meaning: Han language pinyin), which is a system of romanization (phonemic notation and transcription to Roman script) for Standard... A proverb (from the Latin proverbium) is a pithy saying which gained credence through widespread or frequent use. ... 成语 chéngyÇ” Four-character idioms, or chéngyÇ” (成语/成語, literally to become (part of) the language) are widely used in 文言 Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity to until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today. ... Urban legends are a kind of folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them (see rumor). ... Communal reinforcement is a social phenomenon in which a concept or idea is repeatedly asserted very frequently in a community, that its existence is reinforced to become a strong belief in many peoples minds; regardless of whether sufficient empirical evidence has been presented to support it. ... In dialectic, the term logical fallacy properly refers to a formal fallacy: a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument which renders the argument invalid. ... An argumentum ad populum, in logic, is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or all people believe it; it alleges that In ethics this argument is stated, // Related ideas Argumentum ad populum has several aliases[1]: Appeal to belief Argumentum ad numerum Appeal to...

The proverb came from the story of an alleged speech by Pang Cong (龐蔥), an official of the state of Wei in the Warring States Period in Chinese History. According to the Warring States Records (also known as "Zhan Guo Ce"), before he left on a trip to the state of Zhao, Pang Cong asked the King of Wei whether he would hypothetically believe in one civilian's report that a tiger was roaming the markets in the capital city, to which the King replied no. Pang Cong asked what the King thought if two people reported the same thing, and the King said he would begin to wonder. Pang Cong then asked, "what if three people all claimed to have seen a tiger?" The King replied that he would believe in it. Pang Cong reminded the King that the notion of a live tiger in a crowded market was absurd, yet when repeated by numerous people, it seemed real. As a high-ranking official, Pang Cong had more than three opponents and critics; naturally, he urged the King to pay no attention to those who would spread rumors about him while he was away. "I understand," the King replied, and Pang Cong left for Zhao. Yet, slanderous talk took place. When Pang Cong returned to Wei, the King indeed stopped seeing him. The following details the state of Wei of the Warring States Period. ... Alternative meaning: Warring States Period (Japan) The Warring States Period (traditional Chinese: 戰國時代, simplified Chinese: 战国时代 pinyin Zhànguó Shídài) takes place from sometime in the 5th century BC to the unification of China by Qin in 221 BC. It is nominally considered to be the second part of the... China is the worlds oldest continuous major civilization, with written records dating back about 3,500 years and with 5,000 years being commonly used by Chinese as the age of their civilization. ... Zhanguoce (simplified Chinese: 战国策, traditional Chinese: 戰國策, pinyin: Zhànguócè) (ZGC) was a renowned ancient Chinese historical work on the Warring States Period compiled in late Western Han Dynasty by Liu Xiang (劉向). ... State of Zhao (small seal script, 220 BC) Zhao (pinyin: zhao4, simplified Chinese: èµµ, traditional Chinese: 趙) was a Chinese state during the Warring States Period. ... Tigers (Panthera tigris) are mammals of the Felidae family and one of four big cats in the Panthera genus. ...

Original text

See: Wei Ce, Zhan Guo Ce.

See also

• Four-character idiom
• Zhan Guo Ce
• Wikiquote:Chinese proverbs