焚琴煮鹤 in English fen2 qin2 zhu3 he4 Meaning

Meanings

  • literally (word for word) to burn zithers and cook cranes
  • metaphorically to waste valuable resources
  • to destroy wantonly beautiful things

Simplified Characters

焚 琴 煮 鹤

Traditional Characters

焚 琴 煮 鶴

Pinyin

fen2 qin2 zhu3 he4

Literal

Literal explanation, with pronunciation and meaning of each character.

焚fen2to burn 琴qin2guqin 古琴[gu3 qin2] (a type of zither) 煮zhu3variant of 煮[zhu3] 鹤he4crane