田忌賽馬

简 田忌赛马 · 繁 田忌賽馬
Mandarin · pinyin Tián Jì sài mǎ

Meanings

  1. Tian Ji races his horses (and accepts one loss in order to ensure two wins) (idiom)
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Characters in this entry

田
tián · field, arable land, cultivated
忌
jì · jealous, envious; fear
賽
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馬
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赛
sài · compete, contend; contest, race
马
mǎ · horse; surname; Kangxi radical 187
Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

2–4–4–3 · Tian2 Ji4 sai4 ma3

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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.

田忌賽馬 · find source passages ↗ · 田忌赛马 · find source passages ↗

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Compare dictionary sources 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

tin4 gei6 coi3 maa5

Cantonese word readings for 田忌賽馬. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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

田忌賽馬 · Tian2 Ji4 sai4 ma3
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 74,815
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record田忌賽馬 田忌赛马 [Tian2 Ji4 sai4 ma3] /Tian Ji races his horses (and accepts one loss in order to ensure two wins) (idiom)/