打草惊蛇 — Chinese idiom
打草惊蛇
dǎ cǎo jīng shé
Traditional: 打草驚蛇
Meaning
- lit. beat the grass to scare the snake
- fig. to inadvertently alert an enemy
- to punish sb as a warning to others
Character by character
- 打dǎto attack, to beat, to hit, to strike
- 草cǎograss, herbs; straw, thatch
- 惊jīngto frighten, to startle; surprise, alarm
- 蛇shésnake
Idioms sharing a character
- 一炮打响 yī pào dǎ xiǎng
- 一网打尽 yī wǎng dǎ jìn
- 倒打一耙 dào dǎ yī pá
- 包打天下 bāo dǎ tiān xià
- 乔装打扮 qiáo zhuāng dǎ bàn
- 单打独斗 dān dǎ dú dòu
- 围城打援 wéi chéng dǎ yuán
- 宽打窄用 kuān dǎ zhǎi yòng
- 打入冷宫 dǎ rù lěng gōng
- 打家劫舍 dǎ jiā jié shè
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.