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不听老人言，吃亏在眼前

bù tīng lǎo rén yán , chī kuī zài yǎn qiándictionary entry
DEFINITION CC-CEDICT
(idiom) ignore your elders at your peril
Sources & editorial notes

Reference definitions: CC-CEDICT contributors and MDBG, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source release 2026-10-27T01:55:52Z. Imported 2026-10-27. Definition wording and meaning order are retained. Recognized pronunciation references are displayed with tone marks; the original source record is available below.

Source record: cd-29e788190f0e5015. Source SHA-256: bbc4b27f26bee1a262f4d7939667a040c7857c7fc0200a2fa7a86d3352a09eae.

Original source entry:

不聽老人言，吃虧在眼前 不听老人言，吃亏在眼前 [bu4 ting1 lao3 ren2 yan2 , chi1 kui1 zai4 yan3 qian2] /(idiom) ignore your elders at your peril/

Reference definitions and teaching material have separate provenance.

Reference information

The definitions above are from CC-CEDICT. Examples and usage notes are available on selected entries.

Character information

View the individual characters. Their meanings do not necessarily explain the meaning of the whole word.

Other forms in these source records: 不聽老人言，吃虧在眼前

  • 不
    bù

    no / not so / (bound form) not / un-

  • 听
    yǐn

    smile (archaic)

    tīng

    to listen to / to hear / to heed / to obey / a can (loanword from English "tin") / classifier for canned beverages / to let be / to allow (Taiwan pr. [tìng]) / (literary) to administer / to deal with (Taiwan pr. [tìng])

  • 老
    lǎo

    prefix used before the surname of a person or a numeral indicating the order of birth of the children in a family or to indicate affection or familiarity / old (of people) / venerable (person) / experienced / of long standing / always / all the time / of the past / very / outdated / (of meat etc) tough

  • 人
  • 言
    yán

    words / speech / to say / to talk

  • 吃
    chī

    to eat / to consume / to eat at (a cafeteria etc) / to eradicate / to destroy / to absorb / to suffer (shock, injury, defeat etc)

  • 亏
    kuī

    to lose (money) / to have a deficit / to be deficient / to treat unfairly / luckily / fortunately / thanks to / (used to introduce an ironic remark about sb who has fallen short of expectations)

  • 在
    zài

    to exist / to be alive / (of sb or sth) to be (located) at / (used before a verb to indicate an action in progress)

  • 眼
    yǎn

    eye (CL:隻|只[zhī],雙|双[shuāng]) / (often used with 一[yī]) a look / a glance / small hole / (bound form) salient point / classifier for wells, cave-dwellings etc

  • 前
    qián

    front / forward / ahead / first / top (followed by a number) / future / ago / before / BC (e.g. 前293年) / former / formerly

Reference definitions from CC-CEDICT.