因噎废食 — Chinese idiom
因噎废食
yīn yē fèi shí
Traditional: 因噎廢食
Meaning
- lit. not eating for fear of choking ; fig. to cut off one's nose to spite one's face
- to avoid sth essential because of a slight risk
Character by character
- 因yīncause, reason; by; because
- 噎yēto choke; to hiccup
- 废fèito terminate; to discard; to abgrogate
- 食shífood; to eat
Idioms sharing a character
- 互为因果 hù wéi yīn guǒ
- 前因后果 qián yīn hòu guǒ
- 因人成事 yīn rén chéng shì
- 因人而异 yīn rén ér yì
- 因公殉职 yīn gōng xùn zhí
- 因利乘便 yīn lì chéng biàn
- 因势利导 yīn shì lì dǎo
- 因地制宜 yīn dì zhì yí
- 因小失大 yīn xiǎo shī dà
- 因循守旧 yīn xún shǒu jiù
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.