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草草了事

Mandarin · pinyin cǎo cǎo liǎo shì

to rush through the work
to get through a thing carelessly

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Characters in this entry

草: cǎo · grass, straw, thatch, herbs
了: le · to finish; particle of completed action
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

3–3–3–4 · cao3 cao3 liao3 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 Wiktionary · 1 sense · 1 Cantonese reading

Rime Cantonese 粵拼

cou2 cou2 liu5 si6

Cantonese word readings for 草草了事. 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 deal with a matter carelessly

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

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