南箕北斗 — Chinese idiom
南箕北斗
Nán jī Běi dǒu
Meaning
- lit. the Winnowing Basket in the southern sky, and the Big Dipper in the north
- fig. sth which, despite its name, is of no practical use
Character by character
- 南Nánsouth; southern; southward
- 箕jīsieve; dust pan; garbage bag
- 北Běinorth; northern; northward
- 斗dǒuto struggle, to fight, to contend; measuring cup
Idioms sharing a character
- 南征北伐 nán zhēng běi fá
- 南征北战 nán zhēng běi zhàn
- 南征北讨 nán zhēng běi tǎo
- 南辕北辙 nán yuán běi zhé
- 寿比南山 shòu bǐ Nán Shān
- 大江南北 Dà jiāng nán běi
- 天南地北 tiān nán dì běi
- 终南捷径 Zhōng nán jié jìng
- 北叟失马 běi sǒu shī mǎ
- 喝西北风 hē xī běi fēng
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.