画蛇添足 — Chinese idiom
画蛇添足
huà shé tiān zú
Traditional: 畫蛇添足
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.