Idiom 9: 偷工减料
Learn Mandarin With Me! (Proverbs & Idioms)
So what's Idioms?
成语 [chéngyǔ] are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expressions, most of which consist of four characters.
Chengyu were widely used in Classical Chinese and are still common in vernacular Chinese writing and in the spoken language today.
We shall learn more about it!(:
偷工减料 [ tōu gōng jiǎn liào]
Saving work, reducing material.
Breakdown
偷 – save
工 – work
减 – reduce
料 – material
Meaning:
Refers to botching things up, doing a really poor job, jerry-building.
May encounter this when, eg. the news talk about poorly done construction work.
Published: 18.02.2012, 12:19am
Adapted from: (x)
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