前功尽弃
- Literal
- the earlier achievement, all thrown away
- Figurative
- To lose everything you had achieved in one stroke: a slip or a quit near the end that wipes out all the work behind it.
Where does 前功尽弃 come from?
During the Warring States period, the Qin general Bai Qi was stringing victories together and preparing to attack Liang. To stop him, Su Li suggested that the ruler of Zhou send someone to tell him a parable. In Chu there lived Yang Youji, an archer so skilled he could hit a willow leaf at a hundred paces, a hundred shots out of a hundred. A bystander told him he still had something to learn: if he did not know when to stop, a moment would come when, his arm tired and his bow off true, a single missed shot would throw away every bit of credit he had earned. That is where the phrase comes from; today it is used above all for long efforts that fall apart right at the end.
Source (出处): 《战国策》
How is 前功尽弃 used? Two examples
- 只差最后一步，现在放弃就前功尽弃了。
There's only one step left; if you quit now, all that work goes down the drain.
- 硬盘坏了，三个月的心血前功尽弃。
The hard drive failed and three months of work went down the drain.
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