📖 Meaning
All previous efforts and achievements are completely wasted or ruined. It describes the frustration of having prior hard work come to nothing, often due to giving up prematurely or encountering a final failure.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom does not trace back to a single definitive classical source but is a compound expression rooted in classical Chinese. The characters 前 (previous), 功 (merit/effort), 尽 (entirely), and 废 (discard/waste) combine to convey the total loss of accumulated effort. It is closely related to the more common variant 前功尽弃, which appears in texts from the Warring States period. Over time, the phrase became a standard way to warn against abandoning work near completion.
💡 Example Usage
训练了半年，若因一次伤病退出比赛，岂非前功尽废？
After half a year of training, wouldn't withdrawing from the competition due to an injury mean all that effort was wasted?
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 前功尽废
- Pinyin: qián gōng jìn fèi
- Literal Translation: previous, effort, completely, abandoned
- Category: Perseverance
- Characters: 4