The earliest appearance of the name "hiatus" is in the Tang Dynasty. The old Tang book - Zheng xingxin biography" has been mentioned in the so-called "Zheng five after the body" (a "after the" body poem). But it as a language form and language phenomenon, but far in the pre-Qin period has appeared. For example, in "The Strategies of the Warring States" (战国策-楚策四)："It is not too late to mend a lost sheep." It means that it is not too late to mend the sheep pen after losing the sheep. This is the hiatus seen today.
The hiatus is created by the working people in their daily lives, and has distinctive national characteristics and a strong flavor of life. The hiatus humor, intriguing, for the majority of the people are happy to see. Ancient hiatus although rarely seen in written records, but in folk circulation is certainly a lot of, such as Qian Daxin "HengYinLu" contained: "Thousands of miles to send goose feather, the gift of light affection, Fuzai contained in the Song Dynasty proverbs." These kinds of hiatus continue to be used by people even today.
The original hiatus did not have the same presentation as today's hiatus, which was an omission of idioms and sentences commonly used at the time. Chen Wangdao called it "hidden words" in "Rhetoric Fafan". For example, the phrase "倚伏" is used instead of "祸福"(from the Tao Te Ching: "Woe is where the blessing lies, and fortune is where the misfortune lies"). This kind of hiatus requires a certain level of proficiency in the literary language, and its scope of use is limited.
Meaning:
The hiatus is a special form of Chinese language. It generally divides a sentence into two parts to express a certain meaning, with the first part being a metaphor or simile and the second part being an explanation of the meaning. In a certain language environment, usually say the first half, "rest" to the second half, you can understand and guess its original meaning, so it is called hiatus. The hiatus is also called a witty remark, which can be regarded as a kind of Chinese word game. The hiatus is a kind of familiar language, which includes four kinds of idioms, proverbs, idioms and hiatus.