虎头蛇尾 — Chinese idiom
虎头蛇尾
hǔ tóu shé wěi
Traditional: 虎頭蛇尾
Meaning
- lit. tiger's head, snake's tail ; fig. a strong start but weak finish
Character by character
- 虎hǔtiger; brave, fierce; surname
- 头tóuhead; chief, boss; first, top
- 蛇shésnake
- 尾wěitail; extremity, end; back, rear
Idioms sharing a character
- 三人成虎 sān rén chéng hǔ
- 两虎相争 liǎng hǔ xiāng zhēng
- 势成骑虎 shì chéng qí hǔ
- 如虎添翼 rú hǔ tiān yì
- 打马虎眼 dǎ mǎ hu yǎn
- 暴虎冯河 bào hǔ píng hé
- 为虎作伥 wèi hǔ zuò chāng
- 照猫画虎 zhào māo huà hǔ
- 狐假虎威 hú jiǎ hǔ wēi
- 狼吞虎咽 láng tūn hǔ yàn
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.