"Seven mouths and eight tongues" is a vivid and graphic idiom. Literally, it means seven mouths and eight tongues, describing a situation where there are many people talking at once, with a chaotic mix of voices and differing opinions. It is often used to depict a scene in which many people speak simultaneously, lively yet disorderly. It can indicate that everyone is actively expressing their views, or that the scene is noisy and chaotic, making it hard to reach agreement. This idiom originates from Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber in the Qing Dynasty, and in classical novels it is often used to portray scenes with many characters and a clamor of voices. In terms of emotional coloring, it tends to be neutral or mildly derogatory, emphasizing that many people are talking and opinions are varied, and sometimes it implies helplessness over conflicting views and the inability to settle on one conclusion. As for usage contexts, it applies to meeting discussions, group chats, scenes of sudden incidents, and so on—for example, everyone gathering around to offer ideas in a chaotic chorus, or commenting on something with a jumble of different voices. In terms of cultural background, it reflects the characteristic of Chinese to use combinations of numbers and body parts to vividly express abstract concepts, and it shares a similar approach with idioms such as "seven hands and eight feet" and "seven patchings and eight piecings."
📝 Example
1. In the class meeting, the students discussed where to go for the spring outing, all talking at once, and in the end, they could not reach a consensus. (In the sentence, it means everyone was talking at once, each saying their own thing, with no unified opinion.)
2. A crowd gathered at the scene of the accident, all talking at once and guessing the cause, but no one really knew the situation. (In the sentence, it means everyone was chattering away, one after another, making random comments, and the scene was noisy.)