马马虎虎

Word by word

horse · horse · tiger · tiger

Idiomatic sense

Two living senses, and they are not the same.

Careless, slapdash, done without attention. The work, the homework, the checking of a figure. This sense scolds.

Or, only just acceptable. Asked how the food was, a speaker says 马马虎虎 and means one can eat it, and need not praise it. This sense shrugs.

Which sense is meant is in the grammar and the context. 马马虎虎地做 is the careless adverb. 还马马虎虎 as an answer is the shrug.

Examples

1. 这活儿干得马马虎虎，得返工。

   This was done any old how. It has to be redone.

2. 味道嘛，马马虎虎，还能吃。

   The flavor? It's all right. You can eat it.

Equivalents

Marks say how far the other phrase travels with this one. How to read them.

1. partial

   English

   slapdash

   Covers the careless sense only. It does not mean so-so.

2. partial

   English

   so-so

   Covers the shrug only. It does not scold a worker.

3. partial

   Japanese

   いいかげん

   Careless, half-done, not to be trusted. It covers the scolding sense. It does not answer 'how's the food?'

4. partial

   Japanese

   まあまあ

   The shrug. Passable, nothing to praise. It will not scold a worker.

5. partial

   German

   schlampig

   Careless work. It will not serve as the shrug. The shrug, said of a meal or a result, is geht so. Neither covers both senses.

6. partial

   French

   comme ci comme ça

   The shrug. It will not describe a job done so badly it must be redone.

Notes

The characters are 马 and 虎, each said twice. Stories about why a horse and a tiger were chosen are folk explanations. They are not repeated here. The two senses above are not in doubt.

Traditional writing is 馬馬虎虎. The headword is simplified, as elsewhere in the Chinese entries.

Sources

• Ordinary modern colloquial word, with the two senses distinguished above. Wording is original. No dictionary entry is copied.