欲盖弥彰 — Chinese idiom
欲盖弥彰
yù gài mí zhāng
Traditional: 欲蓋彌彰
Meaning
- trying to hide it makes it more conspicuous ; A cover up only makes matters worse.
Character by character
- 欲yùdesire, want, longing, intent
- 盖gàito cover, to hide, to protect
- 弥mícomplete, extensive, full; to fill
- 彰zhāngclear, manifest, obvious
Idioms sharing a character
- 七情六欲 qī qíng liù yù
- 伤心欲绝 shāng xīn yù jué
- 利欲熏心 lì yù xūn xīn
- 呼之欲出 hū zhī yù chū
- 喷薄欲出 pēn bó yù chū
- 垂涎欲滴 chuí xián yù dī
- 悲痛欲绝 bēi tòng yù jué
- 欲壑难填 yù hè nán tián
- 我醉欲眠 wǒ zuì yù mián
- 昏昏欲睡 hūn hūn yù shuì
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.