一言丧邦 / 一言喪邦

yī​yán​sàng​bāng

one word can ruin a nation

A single careless or wrong statement may lead a country to ruin or disaster; from a passage in the "Analects"

yì​yán​sàng​bāng

一 (literal) → 一 · yī · one 言 (literal) → 言 · yán · speech 丧 (literal) → 丧/喪 · sàng · to lose 邦 (literal) → 邦 · bāng · country

Changed: simplified, traditional, gloss, definition, pinyin, variant pinyin, variants, separable parts, decomposition

created sense May 20, 2026, 07:57 PM