







蛇欲吞象 is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to have an insatiable and unrealistic ambition or desire, far beyond one's capacity; extreme greed or overreaching”. Literally, “A snake tries to swallow an elephant”.

Turn a Chinese character or sentence into a GIF or MP4
Open the tool →
Printable tracing sheets with a QR learning companion
Open the tool →
Picture and word Bingo for your class
Open the tool →
Choose character parts and animate their colors, together or in stroke order
Open the tool →蛇欲吞象 (shé yù tūn xiàng) is a Chinese idiom (chengyu) meaning “to have an insatiable and unrealistic ambition or desire, far beyond one's capacity; extreme greed or overreaching”.
蛇欲吞象 is pronounced shé yù tūn xiàng in Mandarin Chinese.
Literally, 蛇欲吞象 means “a snake tries to swallow an elephant”. It is used to mean “to have an insatiable and unrealistic ambition or desire, far beyond one's capacity; extreme greed or overreaching”.
蛇想吞下大象。比喻贪欲极大。