一言不发 — Chinese idiom
一言不发
yī yán bù fā
Traditional: 一言不發
Meaning
- to not say a word
Character by character
- 一yīone; a, an; alone
- 言yánwords, speech; to speak, to say
- 不bùno, not, un-; negative prefix
- 发fāto issue, to dispatch, to send out; hair
Idioms sharing a character
- 一丁不识 yī dīng bù shí
- 一丘之貉 yī qiū zhī hé
- 一之为甚 yī zhī wéi shèn
- 一干二净 yī gān èr jìng
- 一了百了 yī liǎo bǎi liǎo
- 一事无成 yī shì wú chéng
- 一五一十 yī wǔ yī shí
- 一以贯之 yī yǐ guàn zhī
- 一元复始 yī yuán fù shǐ
- 一刀两断 yī dāo liǎng duàn
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.