爭先恐後 Save Sign in to save words Simplified: 争先恐后 On the HSK 7-9 vocabulary list, at CEFR level C2. zhēngxiānkǒnghòu ㄓㄥ ㄒㄧㄢ ㄎㄨㄥˇ ㄏㄡˋ to compete to be first to scramble to get ahead to rush forward for fear of falling behind idiom Character by character 爭(zhēng)strive for 先(xiān)beforehand 恐(kǒng)afraid 後(hòu)back 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