虎头蛇尾 — Chinese idiom

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.