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暴虎馮河

简暴虎冯河 · 繁暴虎馮河

Mandarin · pinyin bào hǔ píng hé

lit. fight tigers with one's bare hands and wade across raging rivers (idiom)
fig. to display foolhardy courage

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Characters in this entry

暴: bào · violent, brutal, tyrannical
虎: hǔ · tiger; brave, fierce; surname
馮: Look up this written character
河: hé · river; stream; the Yellow River
冯: féng · surname; gallop; by dint of

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

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Mandarin tones

4–3–2–2 · bao4 hu3 ping2 he2

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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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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

phrase

(figurative) bull-headed heroism

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

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