半途而废
bàn tú ér fèi · HSK 7
to give up halfway
🏗️ half road, then废 (fèi=废ish, wasted) — halfway and done
半 half + 途 road/journey + 而 and then + 废 abandon/waste. You start a journey but quit at the midpoint. The idiom warns against stopping effort before completion.
半 — 八 (split) + 牛 (ox/cow)
半 originally depicted an ox (牛) being divided in two, shown by the splitting strokes 八 on top. The image of cleaving an ox down the middle gave rise to the meaning 'half' or 'to divide into halves'. The modern sense of 'half' or 'partial' comes directly from this ancient act of splitting.
而 — pictograph of beard/whiskers hanging from chin
Originally a pictograph of a beard or facial hair hanging below the chin, visible clearly in oracle bone and bronze script forms. The beard meaning was lost early, and the character was borrowed phonetically to write the grammatical conjunction 'and/but/yet'. This connective use has been standard since classical Chinese.
废 — radical 广 (shelter) + phonetic 发 (fā)
Originally written 廢, this character depicts a building (广, a shelter or house) that has fallen into disuse, with 發 serving as the phonetic component. The core meaning is 'to abandon' or 'discard,' extending to 'ruined,' 'useless,' or 'waste.' The simplified form 废 replaces 發 with 发.