禍福無常

简 祸福无常 · 繁 禍福無常
Mandarin · pinyin huò fú wú cháng

Meanings

  1. disaster and happiness do not follow rules (idiom); future blessings and misfortunes are unpredictable
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Characters in this entry

禍
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福
fú · happiness, good fortune, blessing
無
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常
cháng · common, normal, frequent, regular
祸
huò · misfortune, calamity, disaster
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

4–2–2–2 · huo4 fu2 wu2 chang2

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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.

禍福無常 · find source passages ↗ · 祸福无常 · find source passages ↗

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

wo6 fuk1 mou4 soeng4

Cantonese word readings for 禍福無常. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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

禍福無常 · huo4 fu2 wu2 chang2
CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG · edition 2026-10-13 · source line 80,897
Original dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source & transformation details
Exact source record禍福無常 祸福无常 [huo4 fu2 wu2 chang2] /disaster and happiness do not follow rules (idiom); future blessings and misfortunes are unpredictable/