零敲碎打 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• to do things in bits and pieces ; piecemeal work

Character by character

• 零língzero; fragment, fraction
• 敲qiāoto hammer, to pound, to strike
• 碎suìto break, to smash; broken, busted
• 打dǎto attack, to beat, to hit, to strike

Idioms sharing a character

• 七零八落 qī líng bā luò
• 化整为零 huà zhěng wéi líng
• 四海飘零 sì hǎi piāo líng
• 感激涕零 gǎn jī tì líng
• 琴剑飘零 qín jiàn piāo líng
• 零打碎敲 líng dǎ suì qiāo
• 敲诈勒索 qiāo zhà lè suǒ
• 敲钉钻脚 qiāo dīng zuān jiǎo
• 旁敲侧击 páng qiāo cè jī
• 盎盂相敲 àng yú xiāng qiāo

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