咬文嚼字 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• to bite words and chew characters ; punctilious about minutiae of wording

Character by character

• 咬yǎoto bite, to gnaw
• 文wénculture, literature, writing
• 嚼jiáoto prattle, to be glib
• 字zìcharacter, letter, symbol, word

Idioms sharing a character

• 咬牙切齿 yǎo yá qiè chǐ
• 咬紧牙关 yǎo jǐn yá guān
• 紧咬不放 jǐn yǎo bù fàng
• 一文不值 yī wén bù zhí
• 一纸空文 yī zhǐ kōng wén
• 不值一文 bù zhí yī wén
• 博文约礼 bó wén yuē lǐ
• 天文数字 tiān wén shù zì
• 奇文共赏 qí wén gòng shǎng
• 才兼文武 cái jiān wén wǔ

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