争先恐后 — Chinese idiom
争先恐后
zhēng xiān kǒng hòu
Traditional: 爭先恐後
Meaning
- to compete to be first; to scramble to get ahead; to rush forward for fear of falling behind
Character by character
- 争zhēngto dispute, to fight, to contend, to strive
- 先xiānfirst, former, previous
- 恐kǒngfearful, apprehensive; to fear, to dread
- 后hòuafter; behind, rear; descendants
Idioms sharing a character
- 你争我夺 nǐ zhēng wǒ duó
- 两虎相争 liǎng hǔ xiāng zhēng
- 分秒必争 fēn miǎo bì zhēng
- 力争上游 lì zhēng shàng yóu
- 只争朝夕 zhǐ zhēng zhāo xī
- 明争暗斗 míng zhēng àn dòu
- 争分夺秒 zhēng fēn duó miǎo
- 争名夺利 zhēng míng duó lì
- 争斤论两 zhēng jīn lùn liǎng
- 争权夺利 zhēng quán duó lì
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.