狐假虎威 hú jiǎ hǔ wēi
The fox walks ahead of the tiger — and every animal clears the road.
The short answer
狐假虎威 means the fox borrowing the tiger's might: small-power swaggering on the strength of someone bigger behind it. 假 here is the classical word for “borrow”.
The story
The Strategies of the Warring States preserves the fable: a tiger caught a fox and prepared to eat him. The fox, unafraid, declared that Heaven had appointed him king of beasts — “eat me and you defy Heaven; follow behind me and watch them flee.” They walked together. Every animal fled, of course, from the tiger. The fox said: see? The tiger believed him.
The advisor telling it to the King of Chu had a precise target: a celebrated general whose fearsome reputation belonged, said the advisor, to the king's armies rather than the man. The animals were never afraid of the fox.
What it means today
The idiom lands on anyone whose authority is borrowed: the assistant who barks with the boss's voice, the functionary whose importance is the office not the person, the small power that struts because a big power stands behind it.
Note the grammar trap: 假 looks like “fake” in modern Chinese, but here it is classical for “to borrow” — the fox does not fake the tiger's might; he rents it.
How to use it
Typical shape: 他不过是狐假虎威，仗着经理的名字吓人, “he's just the fox borrowing the tiger — scaring people with the manager's name”.
In use
2 examples别怕他，他就是狐假虎威，靠的是他舅舅的职位。
Don't fear him — he's the fox borrowing the tiger's might, running on his uncle's position.
公司里那些狐假虎威的人，领导一换就没了底气。
The borrowed-tiger people in a company lose their nerve the moment the leadership changes.
The characters
Explore individuallyIndividual character meanings do not always explain the meaning of the whole word.
This guide is original Dengdeng editorial content, offered under CC BY-SA 4.0. The linked dictionary entries adapt CC-CEDICT under the same license.