偷雞不成蝕把米 Save Create a free account to save words Simplified: 偷鸡不成蚀把米 tōujībùchéngshíbǎmǐ ㄊㄡ ㄐㄧ ㄅㄨˋ ㄔㄥˊ ㄕˊ ㄅㄚˇ ㄇㄧˇ lit. to try to steal a chicken only to end up losing the rice used to lure it (idiom) fig. to try to gain an advantage only to end up worse off to go for wool and come back shorn Character by character 偷(tōu)steal 雞(jī)chicken 不(bù)no 成(chéng)succeed 蝕(shí)nibble away at sth 把(bǎ)marks the object before the verb 米(mǐ)uncooked rice Sign up for a free account to save words and review them A Chinese word or character, or English Search Sources CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0 pinyinjs, Apache-2.0