五马分尸 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• to tear off sb's four limbs and head using five horse-drawn carts (historical form of capital punishment); (fig.) to tear apart; to utterly destroy; to brutally dismember

Character by character

• 五wǔfive; surname
• 马mǎhorse; surname
• 分fēnto divide, to allocate; fraction; small unit of ti
• 尸shībody, corpse

Idioms sharing a character

• 一五一十 yī wǔ yī shí
• 三五成群 sān wǔ chéng qún
• 三令五申 sān lìng wǔ shēn
• 三番五次 sān fān wǔ cì
• 三纲五常 sān gāng wǔ cháng
• 五光十色 wǔ guāng shí sè
• 五味俱全 wǔ wèi jù quán
• 五味杂陈 wǔ wèi zá chén
• 五彩缤纷 wǔ cǎi bīn fēn
• 五色缤纷 wǔ sè bīn fēn

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