取长补短 Save Create a free account to save words Traditional (Taiwan): 取長補短 qǔchángbǔduǎn ㄑㄩˇ ㄔㄤˊ ㄅㄨˇ ㄉㄨㄢˇ 男 女 lit. use others' strengths to make up for one's weak points (idiom from Mencius) to use this in place of that what you lose on the swings, you win on the roundabouts Character by character 取(qǔ)take 长(cháng)long 补(bǔ)make up for 短(duǎn)weak point 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