食古不化 Save Sign in to save words shígǔbùhuà ㄕˊ ㄍㄨˇ ㄅㄨˋ ㄏㄨㄚˋ to swallow ancient learning without digesting it (idiom) to be pedantic without having a mastery of one's subject Character by character 食(shí)eat 古(gǔ)surname Gu 不(bù)no 化(huà)make into A Chinese word or character, or English Search Sources CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0 pinyinjs, Apache-2.0