LookupMandarin · 繁體 · English

ChineseCharactersMeanings inMandarin–English · CC-CEDICTSources ↗

DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

成事不足，敗事有餘

简成事不足，败事有余 · 繁成事不足，敗事有餘

Mandarin · pinyin chéng shì bù zú , bài shì yǒu yú

unable to accomplish anything but liable to spoil everything (idiom)
unable to do anything right
never make, but always mar

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

成: chéng · completed, finished, fixed
事: shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident
不: bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
足: zú · foot; attain, satisfy, enough; Kangxi radical 156
敗: Look up this written character
有: yǒu · have, own, possess; exist
餘: Look up this written character
败: bài · be defeated, decline, fail
余: yú · I, my, me; surname; surplus

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

Explore the spelling

Connected dictionary

7character links

Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗

Counts describe dictionary records, not word frequency or semantic similarity. Source identities stay separate.

Compare dictionary sources 1 Cantonese reading

sing4 si6 bat1 zuk1 ，baai6 si6 jau5 jyu4

Pleco · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Word reading; meanings not aligned.