尚方宝剑
shàng​fāng​bǎo​jiàn

imperial sword

尚方宝剑 (尚方寶劍) shàng​fāng​bǎo​jiàn
imperial sword noun
A sword granted by the emperor to high officials, signifying delegated authority and the power to execute individuals without prior approval.
license to kill idiom
A mandate or authority, especially in fiction or figurative usage, that grants the bearer absolute power or the ability to act without normal legal constraints.

Frequency
Movie subtitles
0.030 per million appears in 0% of films
Written text
0.383 per million

Cross-References

Variant of

Sources
Definitions
CC-CEDICT
Frequency data
SUBTLEX-CHBCC Corpus (BLCU)