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吃乾飯

简吃干饭 · 繁吃乾飯

Mandarin · pinyin chī gān fàn

(coll.) to be incompetent
useless
good-for-nothing

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Characters in this entry

吃: chī · eat; drink; suffer, endure, bear
乾: qián · gān · dry; warming principle of the sun, penetrating and fertilizing, heavenly generative principle (male); trigram ☰; hexagram ䷀
飯: fàn · cooked rice; food; meal
干: gàn · oppose, offend; invade; dried
饭: fàn · cooked rice; food, meal

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

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Mandarin tones

1–1–4 · chi1 gan1 fan4

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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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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

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

verb

(figurative) to lack ability

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

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