前途未卜

Mandarin · pinyin qián tú wèi bǔ

Meanings

  1. hanging in the balance
  2. the future is hard to forecast
  3. ¿Qué serà?
  4. who knows what the future holds?
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Characters in this entry

前
qián · in front, forward; preceding
途
tú · way, road, path, journey; course
未
wèi · not yet; eighth earthly branch
卜
bo · bǔ · fortune telling; prophesy
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–2–4–3 · qian2 tu2 wei4 bu3

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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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前途未卜 · qian2 tu2 wei4 bu3
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 14,565
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record前途未卜 前途未卜 [qian2 tu2 wei4 bu3] /hanging in the balance/the future is hard to forecast/¿Qué serà?/who knows what the future holds?/