五马分尸 — Chinese idiom
五马分尸
wǔ mǎ fēn shī
Traditional: 五馬分屍
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.