[Ads-l] Hunting tigers and swatting flies

[Benjamin Barrett]

Xí Jìnpíng has been talking about hunting tigers (high officials) and 
swatting flies (low officials) to root out corruption since at least 
January 2013 (http://bit.ly/1AcG6kY).

According to the Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/1vqB2t4), this 
expression comes from 拍蝇打虎 (pāi yíng dǎ hǔ), which has the fly part 
first and the tiger part second. Neither Wikitionary (English or Chinese 
version) nor MandarinTools.com give "hunt" for 打, but offer 
translations such as strike, hit, beat, fight, attack and shoot.

Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, WA

Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org