冤有頭，債有主
简 冤有头，债有主 · 繁 冤有頭，債有主Meanings
- an injustice has a start, a debt has a debtor, which means to understand a situation, one must find the ones who started it first
About these definitions
Source definition segments, in their original order. Characters a definition cites are shown without their Mandarin pinyin; classifier lists that CC-Canto copied from CC-CEDICT are marked Mandarin. The community dictionary is not independently verified by zimai.
Reading & tones
The source uses nonstandard reading notation. It is preserved above; no tone diagram or reconstructed reading is generated.
Schematic citation-tone diagrams from the source numbers. These are not recordings or predictions of connected speech.
Written characters
Both source spellings are represented. Written membership is not an etymological or semantic claim.
Mandarin comparison · separate source entries
CC-CEDICT, the Mandarin–English dictionary, lists the same written form:
- 冤有頭，債有主 yuān yǒu tóu , zhài yǒu zhǔ CC-CEDICT · Mandarinfor every grievance someone is responsible, for every debt there is a debtor (idiom); when settling disputes one should not involve third parties
A separate source entry, shown for comparison. The same characters can carry different senses in Mandarin and in Cantonese; zimai does not align these senses.
CC-Canto includes this pinyin reference: yuan1 you3 tou2 , zhai4 you3 zhu3. It does not establish a Mandarin word with the same meaning.
Look up this spelling in the Mandarin dictionary ↗