顾此失彼 — Chinese idiom
顾此失彼
gù cǐ shī bǐ
Traditional: 顧此失彼
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.