表里不一 — Chinese idiom
表里不一
biǎo lǐ bù yī
Traditional: 表裡不一
Meaning
- outside appearance and inner reality differ ; not what it seems
- saying one thing but meaning sth different
Character by character
- 表biǎoto show, to express, to display; outside, appearan
- 里lǐunit of distance equal to 0.5km; village; lane
- 不bùno, not, un-; negative prefix
- 一yīone; a, an; alone
Idioms sharing a character
- 为人师表 wéi rén shī biǎo
- 聊表心意 liáo biǎo xīn yì
- 万世师表 wàn shì shī biǎo
- 虚有其表 xū yǒu qí biǎo
- 表里如一 biǎo lǐ rú yī
- 一日千里 yī rì qiān lǐ
- 千里迢迢 qiān lǐ tiáo tiáo
- 千里鹅毛 qiān lǐ é máo
- 吃里扒外 chī lǐ pá wài
- 字里行间 zì lǐ háng jiān
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.