放空炮

Mandarin · pinyin fàng kōng pào

Meanings

  1. (lit.) to fire blank shots
  2. (fig.) to be all talk and no action
  3. to shoot one's mouth off
  4. to make empty promises
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Characters in this entry

放
fàng · put, release, free, liberate
空
kōng · empty, hollow, bare, deserted
炮
pào · large gun, cannon; artillery
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–1–4 · fang4 kong1 pao4

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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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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

fong3 hung1 paau3

Cantonese word readings for 放空炮. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack

放空炮 · fang4 kong1 pao4
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 50,455
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record放空炮 放空炮 [fang4 kong1 pao4] /(lit.) to fire blank shots/(fig.) to be all talk and no action/to shoot one's mouth off/to make empty promises/