To be hoist with one's own petard; one's own cleverness or schemes backfiring and causing harm.
他想通过走捷径来完成任务，结果反而把事情搞砸了，真是聪明反被聪明误啊。
He tried to take a shortcut to complete the task, but ended up messing things up instead. It's truly a case of cleverness overreaching itself.
Era:
Early Modern
Frequency:
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