xiù'ér​bù​shí

flowering but bearing no fruit

秀而不实 秀而不實 xiù'ér​bù​shí
flowering but bearing no fruit
flowering but bearing no fruit; refers to plants that bloom without producing seeds. Also describes someone who shows early promise but fails to achieve anything significant, or something that looks impressive on the outside but lacks substance.

Frequency

Written text
0.002 per million

Cross-References

Synonym

Sources

Frequency data
BCC Corpus (BLCU)