杀鸡给猴看

杀鸡给猴看

Literally means:

kill a chicken in front of a monkey (scare the monkey)

Actually means:

punish someone as a warning to others, make an example of sb (by punishment) to frighten others

It is said that monkeys are afraid to seeing blood. Monkey tamers thus scare the monkey by killing the chicken.

Figuratively it means punishing someone as a warning to others. It is often used to warn those who are likely to make the same mistakes.

传说猴子怕见到血，驯猴的人便杀鸡来吓唬猴子。

比喻用惩罚一个人的办法来警告其他人。多用来警告那些很有可能犯同样错误的人。

Idiom Story

In ancient times, a man caught a wild monkey in the mountains. He hoped that the wild monkey would do something for him, so he chained it to the door of his house in the hope that it would be his keeper.

One day, this ancient man went to the mountain to cut firewood, only to find that some of his chickens had been stolen by a fox. He felt very sad and went to teach the monkey, but the monkey gloated over his misfortune and cried there. The hunter was very angry, but he did not know what to do.

The second time it was the same. He beat the monkey, but nothing help.

The third time out to find that the chicken or kept being stolen by the fox to eat, see the chicken was almost eaten up, only a few left. The hunter thought, have been caught by the fox, it is better to kill themselves to eat.

That day, before he went out to kill a chicken to eat at the door, the monkey saw a hunter with a knife cut the throat of a chicken, afraid of hurriedly covered his eyes with his hand, the hunter thought: this monkey is not afraid of how to fight, it seems that he is afraid of killing a chicken. So after that, the hunter always showed him the way before he went out of the mountain.

Later, the monkey did not dare to be presumptuous, so he gave him the house in an honest way.