捉贼捉脏

捉贼捉脏 in English

zhuō zéi zhuō zāng: (idiom) To deal with questions of blame and wrongdoing on the basis of facts.

Character breakdown

捉 zhuō to clutch
贼賊 zéi thief
脏髒 zāng dirty

How it used to be written

捉

Chu manuscripts 戰國.楚
Small seal script

贼

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

Bronze script 西周晚期
Clerical script 東漢
See all 5 forms

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

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