亡羊补牢
wáng yáng bǔ láo · HSK 7
better late than never
🐑🔨 亡 lose + 羊 sheep + 补 mend + 牢 pen-fold
Literally to mend the fold only after the sheep are already gone. The fix is real and worthwhile, just overdue — better late than never, like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
羊 — pictograph of a sheep's head with horns
羊 is a pictograph showing a sheep viewed from the front, with the top strokes representing curved horns above the face. In ancient China sheep symbolized goodness and auspiciousness, so 羊 became a common semantic component in characters like 美 (beautiful) and 善 (good).
补 — clothes radical 衤 + 甫 (phonetic)
补 is a phono-semantic compound. The left side 衤 (clothes radical) gives the meaning, originally referring to patching or mending clothes. The right side 甫 supplies the sound. From 'mend a garment' the meaning broadened to 'repair, supplement, make up for'.
牢 — roof 宀 + ox 牛
Originally a pictograph showing an ox (牛) penned under a roof or enclosure (宀), depicting a livestock pen or stable. From 'animal pen' it extended to mean 'prison' (a place of confinement) and then 'firm, secure, sturdy' — the sense of something solidly enclosed.