得不償失 Save Sign in to save words Simplified: 得不偿失 On the HSK 7-9 vocabulary list, at CEFR level C2. débùchángshī ㄉㄜˊ ㄅㄨˋ ㄔㄤˊ ㄕ the gains do not make up for the losses (idiom) Character by character 得(dé)get 不(bù)no 償(cháng)repay 失(shī)lose 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