大事化小,小事化了

Mandarin · pinyin dà shì huà xiǎo , xiǎo shì huà liǎo

Meanings

  1. to turn big problems into small ones, and small problems into no problems at all (idiom)
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Characters in this entry

大
dà · big, great, vast, large, high
事
shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident
化
huà · change, convert, reform; -ize
小
xiǎo · small, tiny, insignificant
了
le · to finish; particle of completed action
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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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.

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大事化小,小事化了 · da4 shi4 hua4 xiao3 , xiao3 shi4 hua4 liao3
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 27,701
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record大事化小,小事化了 大事化小,小事化了 [da4 shi4 hua4 xiao3 , xiao3 shi4 hua4 liao3] /to turn big problems into small ones, and small problems into no problems at all (idiom)/