本性难移 — Chinese idiom
本性难移
běn xìng nán yí
Traditional: 本性難移
Meaning
- It is hard to change one's essential nature . You can't change who you are.
- Can the leopard change his spots? (Jeremiah 13:23)
Character by character
- 本běnroot, origin, source; basis
- 性xìngsex, nature, character; suffix converting a verb t
- 难nánhard, difficult, arduous; unable
- 移yíto shift, to move about, to drift
Idioms sharing a character
- 一本正经 yī běn zhèng jīng
- 一本万利 yī běn wàn lì
- 报本反始 bào běn fǎn shǐ
- 慈悲为本 cí bēi wéi běn
- 舍本逐末 shě běn zhú mò
- 本来面目 běn lái miàn mù
- 本末倒置 běn mò dào zhì
- 看家本领 kān jiā běn lǐng
- 血本无归 xuè běn wú guī
- 变本加厉 biàn běn jiā lì
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.