打狗欺主

1. • to beat a dog and bully its owner
2. • fig. to humiliate sb indirectly by bullying a subordinate

Character by character

• 打(dǎ)a semantically light, transitive verb that is combined with various grammatical objects to form compound verbs and verb-object phrases with a diverse range of meanings
• 狗(gǒu)dog
• 欺(qī)take unfair advantage of
• 主(zhǔ)owner