DICTIONARY · CC-CEDICT

於事無補

简于事无补 · 繁於事無補

Mandarin · pinyin yú shì wú bǔ

unhelpful
useless

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Characters in this entry

於: yú · yū · in, at, on; interjection alas!
事: shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident
無: Look up this written character
補: Look up this written character
于: yú · in, on, at; go to; surname
无: wú · negative, no, not; Kangxi radical 71
补: bǔ · mend, patch, fix, repair, restore

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

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Mandarin tones

2–4–2–3 · yu2 shi4 wu2 bu3

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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.

於事無補 · find source passages ↗ · 于事无补 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

jyu1 si6 mou4 bou2

Cantonese word readings for 於事無補. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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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.

phrase

(idiomatic) unhelpful or useless to the situation

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

Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source & license · Data pack