Welcome to ChineseFrequencyDictionary.com. Enter a Chinese character or compound Chinese word to lookup. If a valid dictionary entry is found, frequency information will be shown below:

Chinese Character/Word:

Definition(s) for: 纸上谈兵

Hanzi Pinyin Definition(s)
纸上谈兵 zhǐ shàng tán bīng - lit. military tactics on paper (idiom)
- fig. theoretical discussion that is worse than useless in practice
- armchair strategist
- idle theorizing
- cf Zhao Kuo 趙括|赵括[Zhao4 Kuo4] leading an army of 400,000 to total annihilation at battle of Changping 長平之戰|长平之战[Chang2 ping2 zhi1 Zhan4] in 260 BC

List Ranking:

Where rank 1 is most common, and higher numbers are less common.

HSK 2 Level (2012) HSK 3 Band (2022) SUBTLEX-CH BeijingUni Global BeijingUni Weibo
- - 29,260 40,926 39,857

Individual Character Breakdown:

Simp Pinyin Eng
zhǐ- variant of 紙|纸[zhi3]
zhǐ- paper (CL:張|张[zhang1],沓[da2])
- classifier for documents, letters etc
shǎng- used in 上聲|上声[shang3 sheng1]
shàng- (bound form) up; upper; above; previous
- first (of multiple parts)
- to climb; to get onto; to go up
- to attend (class or university)
- (directional complement) up
- (noun suffix) on; above
tán- surname Tan
tán- to speak
- to talk
- to converse
- to chat
- to discuss
bīng- soldiers
- a force
- an army
- weapons
- arms
- military
- warlike
- CL:個|个[ge4]

Other Words Containing 纸上谈兵

Sorted by the 'SUBTLEX-CH' rank because that seems like the most reliable. Words without a SUBTLEX-CH rank are ignored for being too rare.

Word HSK 2 Level (2012) HSK 3 Band (2022) SUBTLEX-CH BeijingUni Global BeijingUni Weibo
纸上谈兵 - - 29,260 40,926 39,857