DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

弄巧成拙

Mandarin · pinyin nòng qiǎo chéng zhuō

to overreach oneself
to try to be clever and end up with egg on one's face

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Characters in this entry

弄: nòng · do, play or fiddle with; alley
巧: qiǎo · skillful, ingenious, clever
成: chéng · completed, finished, fixed
拙: zhuō · stupid, clumsy, crude; convention

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

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Mandarin tones

4–3–2–1 · nong4 qiao3 cheng2 zhuo1

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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.

phrase

(idiomatic) to bungle an ingenious scheme

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

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