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打水漂

Mandarin · pinyin dǎ shuǐ piāo

to skip stones (on water)
(coll.) to squander one's money on a bad investment

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Characters in this entry

打: dǎ · strike, hit, beat; fight; attack
水: shuǐ · water, liquid, lotion, juice
漂: piào · float, drift; tossed about

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

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Mandarin tones

3–3–1 · da3 shui3 piao1

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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

(literal sense) to play ducks and drakes
(figurative) to waste (a large amount of money); to squander; to lose entirely

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

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