歪瓜劣枣

歪瓜劣棗

wāiguālièzǎo

idiom

Meanings

1 misshapen melons and inferior dates
2 ugly or substandard goods
3 (self-deprecating) ugly people / things

Characters

date (fruit); jujube

Examples

市场上剩下的都是些歪瓜劣枣。

Shìchǎng shàng shèng xià de dōu shì xiē wāiguā-lièzǎo.

What's left at the market is all the misshapen rejects.

别看我们是歪瓜劣枣，可干起活来不输别人。

Bié kàn wǒmen shì wāiguā-lièzǎo, kě gàn qǐ huó lái bù shū biérén.

Don't judge us by looks — we're scruffy, but at work we hold our own.

Tips

usage

歪瓜劣枣 is a common variant of the standard form 歪瓜裂枣 (wāiguā-lièzǎo, 'misshapen melons and split dates'); 劣 ('inferior') and 裂 ('split') are interchanged in everyday writing. CC-CEDICT marks this form as the colloquial variant. Both spellings carry the same meaning.

register

Colloquial and very vivid. Often used self-deprecatingly ('I'm just a 歪瓜劣枣') or to describe the leftover/inferior items in a batch.

Stroke Order

歪 wāi

瓜 guā

劣 liè

枣 zǎo