放馬後炮

简 放马后炮 · 繁 放馬後炮
Mandarin · pinyin fàng mǎ hòu pào

Meanings

  1. to fire after the horse has bolted (idiom); to act too late to be effective
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Characters in this entry

放
fàng · put, release, free, liberate
馬
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後
hòu · behind, rear, after; descendents
炮
pào · large gun, cannon; artillery
马
mǎ · horse; surname; Kangxi radical 187
后
hòu · queen, empress, sovereign; (simp. for 後) behind, rear, after
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

4–3–4–4 · fang4 ma3 hou4 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.

放馬後炮 · find source passages ↗ · 放马后炮 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

fong3 maa5 hau6 paau3

Cantonese word readings for 放馬後炮. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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

放馬後炮 · fang4 ma3 hou4 pao4
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 50,496
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record放馬後炮 放马后炮 [fang4 ma3 hou4 pao4] /to fire after the horse has bolted (idiom); to act too late to be effective/