📖 Meaning
To reward good people and good deeds while punishing bad people and bad deeds. It is synonymous with the more common variant 赏善罚恶, expressing a fundamental principle of justice and governance.
📜 Origin Story
This idiom reflects a core principle of Chinese political philosophy emphasizing that rulers and legal systems should reward virtuous conduct and punish wrongdoing. The concept appears throughout classical Chinese texts, including the Book of Documents (尚书), where just governance was defined by this dual mechanism of reward and punishment. The character 否 (fǒu) here means 'bad' or 'evil,' serving as an antonym to 善 (good), making this phrase equivalent in meaning to the more commonly seen variant 赏善罚恶. No single definitive literary source is recorded for this exact phrasing.
💡 Example Usage
法律应当赏善罚否，维护社会的公平正义。
The law should reward the good and punish the wicked, upholding fairness and justice in society.
🏷️ Category
➕ Similar Idioms
➖ Opposite Idioms
🔤 Quick Facts
- Chinese: 赏善罚否
- Pinyin: shǎng shàn fá fǒu
- Literal Translation: reward, good, punish, bad
- Category: Morality
- Characters: 4