劳而不获

劳而不获 in English

láo ér bù huò: (idiom) To have worked without receiving the compensation that should have followed. The expression emphasizes the lack of material return despite the effort made.

Character breakdown

劳勞 láo (bound form) to toil
而 ér and
不 bù no
获獲 huò (bound form) to reap

Stroke order

Le caractère 劳 tracé avec le numéro de chaque trait à son point de départ — Numbered strokes

Stroke-by-stroke animation of the character 劳

Stroke data from Make Me a Hanzi, derived from the Arphic PL fonts under the Arphic Public License.

Le caractère 而 tracé avec le numéro de chaque trait à son point de départ — Numbered strokes

Stroke-by-stroke animation of the character 而

Stroke data from Make Me a Hanzi, derived from the Arphic PL fonts under the Arphic Public License.

Le caractère 不 tracé avec le numéro de chaque trait à son point de départ — Numbered strokes

Stroke-by-stroke animation of the character 不

Stroke data from Make Me a Hanzi, derived from the Arphic PL fonts under the Arphic Public License.

Le caractère 获 tracé avec le numéro de chaque trait à son point de départ — Numbered strokes

Stroke-by-stroke animation of the character 获

Stroke data from Make Me a Hanzi, derived from the Arphic PL fonts under the Arphic Public License.

How it used to be written

劳

These are the forms of 勞, the traditional character: 劳 is a twentieth-century simplification, found in no ancient corpus.

Oracle bone script 商
Clerical script 東漢
See all 19 forms

而

Bronze script 西周晚期
Clerical script 西晉
See all 16 forms

不

Oracle bone script 商
Clerical script 東漢
See all 21 forms

获

These are the forms of 獲, the traditional character: 获 is a twentieth-century simplification, found in no ancient corpus.

Oracle bone script 商
Clerical script 東漢
See all 11 forms

Forms, sources and dates: the 字形演變 database of 小學堂, Academia Sinica, public domain (CC0).

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