Embodiments of the present invention disclose a discovery resource time-frequency hopping method and a terminal, where the terminal includes: a resource determining unit, configured to determine a real discovery resource in a real discovery resource pool; a frequency-domain expansion unit, configured to: perform frequency-domain virtual expansion on the real discovery resource pool according to a frequency division multiplexing factor value, and determine a virtual discovery resource in a virtual discovery resource pool corresponding to the real discovery resource pool; a time-frequency hopping unit, configured to perform, according to a time-frequency hopping solution, virtual time-frequency hopping on a correspondence between the terminal and the determined virtual discovery resource in the virtual discovery resource pool; and a signal sending unit, configured to send a discovery signal by using a real discovery resource that corresponds to a virtual discovery resource which is occupied after the virtual time-frequency hopping.