惩前毖后 — Chinese idiom
惩前毖后
chéng qián bì hòu
Traditional: 懲前毖後
Meaning
- lit. to punish those before to prevent those after ; to criticize former mistakes firmly to prevent them happening again
Character by character
- 惩chéngto discipline, to punish, to reprimand, to warn
- 前qiánin front, forward; former, preceding
- 毖bìcaution; to guard against, to take care
- 后hòuafter; behind, rear; descendants
Idioms sharing a character
- 劝善惩恶 quàn shàn chéng è
- 严惩不贷 yán chéng bù dài
- 小惩大诫 xiǎo chéng dà jiè
- 惩一儆百 chéng yī jǐng bǎi
- 惩恶扬善 chéng è yáng shàn
- 一往无前 yī wǎng wú qián
- 一雪前耻 yī xuě qián chǐ
- 不计前嫌 bù jì qián xián
- 不顾前后 bù gù qián hòu
- 停滞不前 tíng zhì bù qián
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.