刻舟求劍 Save Sign in to save words Simplified: 刻舟求剑 On the HSK 7-9 vocabulary list, at CEFR level C2. kèzhōuqiújiàn ㄎㄜˋ ㄓㄡ ㄑㄧㄡˊ ㄐㄧㄢˋ lit. a notch on the side of a boat to locate a sword dropped overboard (idiom) fig. an action made pointless by changed circumstances Character by character 刻(kè)quarter 舟(zhōu)boat 求(qiú)seek 劍(jiàn)double-edged sword A Chinese word or character, or English Search Sources CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0 pinyinjs, Apache-2.0 国际中文教育中文水平等级标准, 中华人民共和国教育部, MIT