明人不做暗事

Mandarin · pinyin míng rén bù zuò àn shì

Meanings

  1. an honest person does not act surreptitiously (idiom)
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Characters in this entry

明
míng · bright, light, brilliant; clear
人
rén · man; people; mankind; someone else
不
bù · no, not; un-; negative prefix
做
zuò · work, make; act
暗
àn · dark; obscure; in secret, covert
事
shì · affair, matter, business; to serve; accident, incident
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–2–4–4–4–4 · ming2 ren2 bu4 zuo4 an4 shi4

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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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Compare dictionary sources 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

ming4 jan4 bat1 zou6 am3 si6

Cantonese word readings for 明人不做暗事. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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

明人不做暗事 · ming2 ren2 bu4 zuo4 an4 shi4
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 52,967
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record明人不做暗事 明人不做暗事 [ming2 ren2 bu4 zuo4 an4 shi4] /an honest person does not act surreptitiously (idiom)/