Gild the lily in Chinese
to gild the lily · HSK 7–9
画蛇添足
Press again to hear it slower.
- 画 painting
- 蛇 snake
- 添 to add
- 足 foot
最后这句话是画蛇添足，删掉吧。 This last sentence is unnecessary; delete it.
It joins your Backpack for Review.
More words with 画 or 蛇 or 添 or 足
See any word in its sentence
The extension shows a card like this for 画蛇添足 and every other word on any page or YouTube subtitle, with the meaning that sentence uses.
How do you say gild the lily in Chinese?
Gild the lily in Chinese is 画蛇添足 (huà shé tiān zú).
Which word should I use?
Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.
Where do these words come from?
Our own dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.
More free tools
Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.
Meanings from our own dictionary. Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.