It is not too late to fix things
The gap between those first two lines is the whole point of a chengyu. It is quoted whole, never assembled, and the literal reading is a picture from the story below rather than a definition — which is why translating the four characters one at a time rarely gets you there.
A shepherd lost a sheep through a hole in his pen and shrugged it off. When a second went the same way he finally patched the hole, and never lost another. The minister Zhuang Xin used the story to tell the King of Chu that a state which has lost ground can still repair itself.
Source: 《战国策》Strategies of the Warring States, c. 1st century BC
The reading shown is the one each character takes inside this idiom — chengyu keep older readings, so it is not always the everyday one. The meanings are read from the same dictionary that powers the translators.
Want the stroke order for one of these? Each character links to its dictionary entry, which animates it.
亡羊补牢 is pronounced wáng yáng bǔ láo and means it is not too late to fix things. Literally it says "mend the pen after the sheep are lost" — like most chengyu, the literal reading is a picture from a story rather than a definition.
《战国策》Strategies of the Warring States, c. 1st century BC. A shepherd lost a sheep through a hole in his pen and shrugged it off. When a second went the same way he finally patched the hole, and never lost another. The minister Zhuang Xin used the story to tell the King of Chu that a state which has lost ground can still repair itself.
wáng yáng bǔ láo. Press the audio button on this page to hear it spoken by a native voice. Tones here are citation tones, so 一 is written yī even where it is said yí in running speech.
亡 (wáng) Deceased (to die - perish), 羊 (yáng) Sheep, 补 (bǔ) Repair (mend - add), 牢 (láo) Firm (prision - jail). These meanings come from the same dictionary as the translators on this site, and the reading shown is the one the character takes inside this idiom.
Yes. Chengyu are not archaic — they are ordinary educated speech, and they turn up in conversation, newspapers and exams. This one sits in the beginner band, which reflects how common it is and how hard its characters are.
Rebuild 亡羊补牢 from scrambled tiles in the Chengyu Story Puzzle, test yourself on idiom meanings in the Chengyu Quiz, browse all the idioms, or save this one above and review it on your review deck.
Every idiom here comes with the story it was compressed from — that is the rule for being listed, and it is why they stick.
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