有头无尾

Pronunciation: yǒu tóu wú wěi Literal meaning: Has a head, no tail

Origin & Usage

Four characters that describe exactly what they name: 有 (have) 头 (head) 无 (lack) 尾 (tail). The picture is of a thing that begins and then simply stops — no ending arrives, not even a poor one. That is what separates it from its close cousin 虎头蛇尾, 'tiger head, snake tail', where a finish does arrive but arrives feeble; here there is no finish at all. It is the flat opposite of 有始有终, and the two are used as a matched pair of judgements about a person's character rather than about any one abandoned task. The phrase travelled well beyond Mandarin: Hokkien speakers say it as ū thâu bô bué, and a learner is as likely to meet it in Taiwan, Fujian or Singapore as in Beijing.

Examples

English: "The redesign was announced with fanfare and then simply stopped being mentioned"

Chinese: 改版计划大张旗鼓地宣布，之后就再没人提起