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打馬虎眼

简打马虎眼 · 繁打馬虎眼

Mandarin · pinyin dǎ mǎ hu yǎn

to play dumb
to slack off (idiom)

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Characters in this entry

打: dǎ · strike, hit, beat; fight; attack
馬: Look up this written character
虎: hǔ · tiger; brave, fierce; surname
眼: yǎn · eye; eyelet, hole, opening
马: mǎ · horse; surname; Kangxi radical 187

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

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Mandarin tones

3–3–5–3 · da3 ma3 hu5 yan3

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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.

打馬虎眼 · find source passages ↗ · 打马虎眼 · find source passages ↗

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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

(dialectal) to pretend to be ignorant of something in order to gloss it over; to act dumb

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

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