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人不可貌相

Mandarin · pinyin rén bù kě mào xiàng

you can't judge a person by appearance (idiom)
you can't judge a book by its cover
often in combination 人不可貌相，海水不可斗量 rén bù kě mào xiàng, hǎi shuǐ bù kě dǒu liáng

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Characters in this entry

人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
不: bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
可: kě · may, can, -able; possibly
貌: mào · countenance, appearance
相: xiāng · mutual, reciprocal, each other

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

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Mandarin tones

2–4–3–4–4 · ren2 bu4 ke3 mao4 xiang4

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Read this spelling in Classical texts

Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

jan4 bat1 ho2 maau6 soeng3

Cantonese word readings for 人不可貌相. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

proverb

one cannot judge someone by his or her appearance; you can’t judge a book by its cover

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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