小惩大诫 — Chinese idiom
小惩大诫
xiǎo chéng dà jiè
Traditional: 小懲大誡
Meaning
- lit. to punish a little to prevent a lot ; to criticize former mistakes firmly to prevent large scale repetition
Character by character
- 小xiǎosmall, tiny, insignificant
- 惩chéngto discipline, to punish, to reprimand, to warn
- 大dàbig, great, vast, high, deep
- 诫jièto warn, to admonish; warning
Idioms sharing a character
- 不容小觑 bù róng xiǎo qù
- 不拘小节 bù jū xiǎo jié
- 幺麽小丑 yāo mó xiǎo chǒu
- 升斗小民 shēng dǒu xiǎo mín
- 因小失大 yīn xiǎo shī dà
- 大材小用 dà cái xiǎo yòng
- 大街小巷 dà jiē xiǎo xiàng
- 大惊小怪 dà jīng xiǎo guài
- 小人得志 xiǎo rén dé zhì
- 小巧玲珑 xiǎo qiǎo líng lóng
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.