顾此失彼 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• lit. to attend to one thing and lose sight of another
• fig. to be unable to manage two or more things at once
• cannot pay attention to one thing without neglecting the other

Character by character

• 顾gùto look back; to look at; to look after
• 此cǐthis, these; in this case, then
• 失shīto lose; to make a mistake, to neglect
• 彼bǐthat, those, the other

Idioms sharing a character

• 三顾茅庐 sān gù máo lú
• 不屑一顾 bù xiè yī gù
• 不管不顾 bù guǎn bù gù
• 不顾一切 bù gù yī qiè
• 不顾前后 bù gù qián hòu
• 奋不顾身 fèn bù gù shēn
• 左顾右盼 zuǒ gù yòu pàn
• 后顾之忧 hòu gù zhī yōu
• 悍然不顾 hàn rán bù gù
• 瞻前顾后 zhān qián gù hòu

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