舞文弄墨 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• to display one's facility with words
• to show off one's literary skills
• (original meaning) to pervert the law by playing with legal phraseology (墨 (mò) was a reference to 绳墨 (shéng mò))

Character by character

• 舞wǔto dance; to brandish
• 文wénculture, literature, writing
• 弄nòngto do; to mock, to tease; to play with
• 墨mòink; writing; Mexico

Idioms sharing a character

• 喜跃抃舞 xǐ yuè biàn wǔ
• 张牙舞爪 zhāng yá wǔ zhǎo
• 徇私舞弊 xùn sī wǔ bì
• 手舞足蹈 shǒu wǔ zú dǎo
• 歌舞升平 gē wǔ shēng píng
• 欢欣鼓舞 huān xīn gǔ wǔ
• 闻鸡起舞 wén jī qǐ wǔ
• 能歌善舞 néng gē shàn wǔ
• 载歌且舞 zài gē qiě wǔ
• 载歌载舞 zài gē zài wǔ

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