打草惊蛇

1. • lit. beat the grass to scare the snake (idiom)
2. • fig. to inadvertently alert an enemy
3. • to punish sb as a warning to others

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
• 草(cǎo)grass
• 惊(jīng)startle
• 蛇(shé)snake