isseki nichō lit. ‘one stone, two birds’
Japanese idiom, set phrase (yojijukugo). To get two things done with a single action.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Japanese speaker.
How do people use 一石二鳥
?
An everyday four-character compound that you’ll hear in ads, at work and at home. It’s a noun, so it takes だ or の: “それは一石二鳥だ” (that’s two birds with one stone), “一石二鳥の方法” (a two-birds-one-stone method). People stretch it for effect, too: Kotobank’s proverb dictionary mentions 一石三鳥, three birds.
一石二鳥
in real sentences
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一石二鳥にする。
Isseki nichō ni suru.
Kill two birds with one stone.
Tatoeba, sentence by hrin, translation by AmarMecheri, CC BY 2.0 FR
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一石二鳥。
Isseki nichō.
To kill two birds with one stone.
Tatoeba, sentence by nihonjin, translation by AMIKEMA, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does 一石二鳥
come from?
It looks like ancient Chinese, but it’s a translation of the English “kill two birds with one stone”, as Daijisen and both Wiktionaries say. Kotobank’s proverb dictionary adds that English-Japanese dictionaries carried the proverb from the end of the Edo period, that Meiji writers rendered it 一石を以て二鳥を殺す (with one stone, kill two birds), and that the long version was squeezed into four characters by the Taishō era. Japanese Wiktionary quotes 一石二鳥 in a 1932 text by Hattori Shisō, and the compound has since traveled on to Chinese and Korean.
Mistakes learners make with 一石二鳥
Using it as a verb the way English does. 一石二鳥 is a noun, so “一石二鳥をする” sounds wrong; say “一石二鳥だ” or “一石二鳥になる” instead.
Other Japanese idioms like 一石二鳥
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?
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