- lit. to ruin the enterprise for the sake of one basketful
- to fail through lack of a final effort
- to spoil the ship for a ha'penny worth of tar (idiom)
Characters
- 功 (功): meritorious deed or service; achievement; result; service; accomplishment; work (physics)
- 亏 (虧): deficiency; deficit; luckily; it's lucky that...; (often ironically) fancy that...
- 一 (一): one; single; a (article); as soon as; entire; whole; all; throughout; "one" radical in Chinese characters (Kangxi radical 1); also pr. [yao1] for greater clarity when spelling out numbers digit by digit
- 篑 (簣): basket for carrying soil
Resources
- Wiktionary: 功亏一篑
- MDBG: 功亏一篑
- Examples with 功亏一篑 on Tatoeba
Examples
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