📖 Meaning
To do things in a piecemeal, fragmented manner; working bit by bit without a unified plan. It describes handling matters in a scattered, intermittent fashion rather than systematically.
📜 Origin Story
The phrase comes from Mao Zedong's preface to a collection of agricultural cooperative documents, where he criticized the lack of comprehensive planning at provincial, county, district, and township levels. He pointed out that work was being done in a fragmented, ad hoc way without coordinated strategy. The idiom vividly evokes the image of striking something in scattered, broken-off pieces rather than with a single decisive blow. It is a modern idiom rooted in 20th-century political writings.
💡 Example Usage
这项工程零敲碎打地干了三年，至今还没完工。
The project has been carried out in a piecemeal fashion for three years and is still not finished.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 零敲碎打
- Pinyin: líng qiāo suì dǎ
- Literal Translation: zero, knock, broken, hit
- Category: Method
- Characters: 4