前车之鉴 — Chinese idiom
前车之鉴
qián chē zhī jiàn
Traditional: 前車之鑑
Meaning
- (lit.) a warning taken from the overturned cart ahead
- (fig.) lesson learned from past mistakes or failures
Character by character
- 前qiánin front, forward; former, preceding
- 车chēcart, vehicle; to move in a cart
- 之zhīmarks preceding phrase as modifier of following ph
- 鉴jiànmirror, looking glass; to reflect
Idioms sharing a character
- 一往无前 yī wǎng wú qián
- 一雪前耻 yī xuě qián chǐ
- 不计前嫌 bù jì qián xián
- 不顾前后 bù gù qián hòu
- 停滞不前 tíng zhì bù qián
- 光前裕后 guāng qián yù hòu
- 冰释前嫌 bīng shì qián xián
- 前世姻缘 qián shì yīn yuán
- 前仆后继 qián pū hòu jì
- 前倨后恭 qián jù hòu gōng
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.