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成事不足,敗事有餘
简 成事不足,败事有余 · 繁 成事不足,敗事有餘Mandarin · pinyin chéng shì bù zú , bài shì yǒu yú
Meanings
- unable to accomplish anything but liable to spoil everything (idiom)
- unable to do anything right
- never make, but always mar
Characters in this entry
- 成
- chéng · completed, finished, fixed
- 事
- shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident
- 不
- bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
- 足
- zú · foot; attain, satisfy, enough; Kangxi radical 156
- 敗
- Look up this written character
- 有
- yǒu · have, own, possess; exist
- 餘
- Look up this written character
- 败
- bài · be defeated, decline, fail
- 余
- yú · I, my, me; surname; surplus
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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.
成事不足,敗事有餘 · find source passages ↗ · 成事不足,败事有余 · find source passages ↗