Misfortunes never come singly.
CHINESE DICTIONARY ENTRY
祸不单行
misfortune does not come singly (idiom)
IN A VIDEO祸不单行
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DEFINITIONS & USAGE
Meaning and common use
01
misfortune does not come singly (idiom)
02
it never rains but it pours
REAL CORPUS EXAMPLES
How 祸不单行 actually appears in real sentences.
These sentences are copied from the Tatoeba corpus, so they are real usage rather than generated text. 祸不单行 appears in 4 of the 89,190 sentences we searched.
I bear in mind that misfortunes never come singly.
There’s a saying that goes, "Fortune always comes in pairs." But there’s another saying that says, "Fortune comes, but never in pairs, while misfortune always does."
COMMON COLLOCATIONS
Words that keep company with 祸不单行.
Counted from the same corpus: the word that most often comes directly before, and directly after, 祸不单行.
Directly before
- 谨记祸不单行1
Directly after
- No repeated neighbour in the corpus.
ABOUT THIS ENTRY
Where this entry comes from
The HSK level, part of speech, and pronunciation come from the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus. The English definitions come from CC-CEDICT. Corpus sentences, collocations, and the frequency figure come from the Tatoeba Chinese sentence export and are counted rather than written, so nothing on this page is invented. Usage notes and the hand-written examples that appear higher up exist only for a handful of entries.
Definitions from CC-CEDICT, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Vocabulary levels and parts of speech from the HSK 3.1 syllabus. This compiled dictionary is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
COMMON QUESTIONS
About 祸不单行
What does 祸不单行 mean in Chinese?
祸不单行 (huòbùdānxíng) means misfortune does not come singly (idiom).
How do you pronounce 祸不单行?
祸不单行 is pronounced huòbùdānxíng.
Is 祸不单行 an HSK word?
祸不单行 is on the list of the HSK 3.1 vocabulary syllabus.
SEE IT IN CONTEXT
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