Japanese Idiom: Start with a Dragon end with a Snake
Photo Credit: Christopher Chan
At first glance, I had no idea what this Japanese idiom was about. Can you guess what it is? :)
Ryuto dabi ni owaru – 竜頭蛇尾に終わる （りゅうとうだびにおわる）
Meaning – Start with a dragon’s head and end with a snake’s tail.
This is a pretty visual idiom and it can be most compared to the idea of starting something off big but petering out at the end. If you’re like me, you probably have a closet full of projects that looked like they were going to be dragons, but ended up being measly little snakes in the end :)
Here’s an example sentence from the book 2001 Japanese and English Idioms:
Kasisha no kakucho wa, ni nen go ni wa ryuto dabi ni owarimashita.
会社の拡張計画は、二年後には竜頭蛇尾に終わりました。
The company expansion plan was a dragon that finished as a snake after two years.
Have fun with this new idiom :)
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