竹篮打水 — Chinese idiom
竹篮打水
zhú lán dǎ shuǐ
Traditional: 竹籃打水
Meaning
- using a wicker basket to draw water ; wasted effort
Character by character
- 竹zhúbamboo; flute
- 篮lánbasket; goal
- 打dǎto attack, to beat, to hit, to strike
- 水shuǐwater, liquid, lotion, juice
Idioms sharing a character
- 势如破竹 shì rú pò zhú
- 破竹之势 pò zhú zhī shì
- 破竹建瓴 pò zhú jiàn líng
- 竹马之交 zhú mǎ zhī jiāo
- 丝竹管弦 sī zhú guǎn xián
- 罄竹难书 qìng zhú nán shū
- 胸有成竹 xiōng yǒu chéng zhú
- 金石丝竹 jīn shí sī zhú
- 青梅竹马 qīng méi zhú mǎ
- 一炮打响 yī pào dǎ xiǎng
Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.