点金成铁 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• to transform gold into base metal ; fig. to edit sb else's beautiful prose and ruin it

Character by character

• 点diǎndot, point, speck
• 金jīngold, metal; money
• 成chéngto accomplish; to become; to complete, to finish;
• 铁tiěiron; strong, solid, firm

Idioms sharing a character

• 指点江山 zhǐ diǎn jiāng shān
• 文不加点 wén bù jiā diǎn
• 煽风点火 shān fēng diǎn huǒ
• 画龙点睛 huà lóng diǎn jīng
• 蜻蜓点水 qīng tíng diǎn shuǐ
• 装点门面 zhuāng diǎn mén miàn
• 点水不漏 diǎn shuǐ bù lòu
• 点睛之笔 diǎn jīng zhī bǐ
• 点石成金 diǎn shí chéng jīn
• 点铁成金 diǎn tiě chéng jīn

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.