It means tolerable and intolerable, which means that if such things can be tolerated, what else cannot be tolerated. It's described as intolerable to the extreme.

This word comes from Confucius's "The Analects of Confucius. Eight Hundred Chapter": "The eight hundred people dancing in the court are tolerable, but who can't be tolerated."

Translation: How dare he dance in his own home They violated the Zhou rites and used a 64-member music and dance team to play music and dance in the courtyard. If such things can be tolerated, what else cannot be tolerated!

Extended information:

It is an idiom story about what is tolerable and what is intolerable:

In slave society, the hierarchy was also very strict within the slave-owning class. .

According to Zhou Rites, the emperor can use eight rows and eight columns of music and dance teams composed of sixty-four people to perform music and dance; the princes can use six Yi, there are forty-eight people in the army; senior officials use four Yi, and there are thirty-two people in the army; scholars can only use two Yi, that is, there are only sixteen people.

Whoever violates these regulations has violated Zhou Li and should be punished.

At that time, there was a senior official in the state of Lu named Ji Pingzi. The Ji family has been a minister for generations, with great power and control of the country's political power. The king is actually under his control. As a high-ranking official, he could only use a music and dance team of thirty-two people, but he compared himself to the emperor, so he used a music and dance team of sixty-four people to play music and dance in his courtyard.

After Confucius learned about this incident, he thought that Ji Pingzi had destroyed the Zhou rites.

Once, Confucius was talking about Ji Pingzi. When talking about this matter, Confucius said: He dared to violate the Zhou rites in his own courtyard and use a music and dance team of sixty-four people to play music and dance. If such things can be tolerated, what else cannot be tolerated.

Later, people used the idiom "what is tolerable, what is intolerable" to mean that things are so bad that they cannot be tolerated.

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