DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

勝之不武

简胜之不武 · 繁勝之不武

Mandarin · pinyin shèng zhī bù wǔ

(fig.) to fight a one-sided battle
to have an unfair advantage in a contest

Full entryShow on map

Characters in this entry

勝: shèng · victory; excel, be better than
之: zhī · marks preceding phrase as modifier of following phrase; it, him her, them; go to
不: bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
武: wǔ · military; martial, warlike
胜: shèng · victory; excel, be better than

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

Explore the spelling

Mandarin tones

4–1–4–3 · sheng4 zhi1 bu4 wu3

Compare attested words with these syllables ↗

Dictionary tones. Connected speech can change their realization.

Connected dictionary

5character 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.

勝之不武 · find source passages ↗ · 胜之不武 · find source passages ↗

Explore Classical grammar ↗

Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense

Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

verb

to win unfairly

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

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack