前功尽弃 — Chinese idiom
前功尽弃
qián gōng jìn qì
Traditional: 前功盡棄
Meaning
- to waste all one's previous efforts
- all that has been achieved goes down the drain
Character by character
- 前qiánin front, forward; former, preceding
- 功gōngachievement, good work; merit; service
- 尽jìnto exhaust, to use up, to deplete
- 弃qìto abandon, to discard, to reject; to desert; to f
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.