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束手無策

简束手无策 · 繁束手無策

Mandarin · pinyin shù shǒu wú cè

lit. to have one's hands bound and be unable to do anything about it (idiom); fig. helpless in the face of a crisis

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Characters in this entry

束: shù · bind, control, restrain; bale
手: shǒu · hand
無: Look up this written character
策: cè · scheme, plan; to whip; urge
无: wú · negative, no, not; Kangxi radical 71

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

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Mandarin tones

4–3–2–4 · shu4 shou3 wu2 ce4

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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.

束手無策 · find source passages ↗ · 束手无策 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

cuk1 sau2 mou4 caak3

Cantonese word readings for 束手無策. 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) to be at a loss what to do; to feel helpless in the face of some difficulty

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

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