The story in learner-safe form
不胫而走 turns a physical impossibility into a memory aid. Something has no lower legs, yet it runs. Modern use usually points to information: news, rumors, reputation, or a story moving faster than expected. English speakers should not over-read the image. It does not say who started the spread, and it does not guarantee truth. It only says the thing traveled widely or quickly without needing obvious legs. The no-legs image gives the phrase a useful limit. News, reputation, rumor, and influence move without visible legs, but the phrase does not say the information is true, planned, or fair. It only describes quick spread. That distinction matters online, where rapid circulation can make something feel confirmed. English speakers should treat 不胫而走 as a spread phrase, not as proof or endorsement. For this entry, the origin note is only the beginning of the explanation. The useful question is why 不胫而走 survived as a portable judgment rather than as a decorative allusion. The story image route gives the reader an image, but the modern sentence must still prove its own fit. A learner should ask three things: what concrete object is being judged, what evidence in the sentence supports that judgment, and what tone the phrase adds that a plain English adjective would not add. This is why the page tests 不胫而走 through unofficial news, reputation spread, truth boundary, usage boundary, misuse boundary; each context changes the pressure on the phrase and shows whether the idiom is acting as praise, warning, neutral description, or criticism. The story or usage background also has a translation boundary. 不胫而走 can point toward spread quickly, spread like wildfire, travel fast without being pushed, but those English choices are not interchangeable. One version may preserve the image, another may sound natural in a classroom answer, and another may be safer in a workplace or essay sentence. The entry therefore treats public references as source cards, not as a paragraph order to imitate. Headword checks, story labels, and English equivalents are separated first; only after that are they rebuilt into the learner path used here: answer, label, examples, wrong-use clinic, comparison, story, and practice. The most common failure is overextension. Because 不胫而走 has a memorable surface, learners may reach for it whenever a topic feels close. The better habit is to compare it with 门庭若市 and 杯弓蛇影 and with 胸有成竹 before writing. If the rejected phrase is hard to reject, the sentence probably has not supplied enough evidence. If the rejected phrase is easy to reject, the learner can explain the boundary and use 不胫而走 with confidence. That is the practical purpose of the origin section: it turns cultural memory into a sentence-level decision instead of leaving the reader with a story and no next action. This retelling is intentionally not a long quotation. It gives the visible action, the mistake or insight, and the modern use boundary so a reader can remember the story without treating every later sentence as a historical claim.