DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

人無橫財不富，馬無夜草不肥

简人无横财不富，马无夜草不肥 · 繁人無橫財不富，馬無夜草不肥

Mandarin · pinyin rén wú hèng cái bù fù , mǎ wú yè cǎo bù féi

(saying) a person cannot become wealthy without windfall profits (or ill-gotten gains etc), just as a horse cannot get fat without night feed

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

人: rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
無: Look up this written character
橫: Look up this written character
財: Look up this written character
不: bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
富: fù · abundant, ample; rich, wealthy
馬: Look up this written character
夜: yè · night, dark; in night; by night
草: cǎo · grass, straw, thatch, herbs
肥: féi · fat, plump, obese; fertile
无: wú · negative, no, not; Kangxi radical 71
横: héng · across
财: cái · wealth, valuables, riches
马: mǎ · horse; surname; Kangxi radical 187

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

Explore the spelling

Connected dictionary

11character links

Explore word families ↗Compare pronunciations ↗Open character structure ↗

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

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.

人無橫財不富，馬無夜草不肥 · find source passages ↗ · 人无横财不富，马无夜草不肥 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗