画蛇添足 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• lit. draw legs on a snake ; fig. to ruin the effect by adding sth superfluous
• to overdo it

Character by character

• 画huàpicture, painting, drawing; to draw
• 蛇shésnake
• 添tiānto add, to append, to increase, to replenish
• 足zúfoot; to attain, to satisfy; enough

Idioms sharing a character

• 指手画脚 zhǐ shǒu huà jiǎo
• 照猫画虎 zhào māo huà hǔ
• 琴棋书画 qín qí shū huà
• 画地为牢 huà dì wéi láo
• 画地自限 huà dì zì xiàn
• 画荻教子 huà dí jiào zǐ
• 画虎类犬 huà hǔ lèi quǎn
• 画饼充饥 huà bǐng chōng jī
• 画龙点睛 huà lóng diǎn jīng
• 佛口蛇心 fó kǒu shé xīn

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