tóu​shǔ​jì​qì

to hesitate for fear of unintended harm

投鼠忌器 tóu​shǔ​jì​qì
to hesitate for fear of unintended harm
To refrain from taking action against an evil person or problem because of the risk of harming innocent people or valuable things nearby; literally to hesitate at throwing something at a rat for fear of breaking the vase it is next to.

Frequency

Written text
0.279 per million

Cross-References

Variant of

Sources

Frequency data
BCC Corpus (BLCU)