take mean advantage of someone when he is down

take mean advantage of someone when he is down

It's a Chinese idiom. Pinyin is Xi à J à NGT ó ush í, which means that when someone falls into a well, instead of rescuing him, he throws a stone into the well. It comes from Li Baojia's officialdom in the Qing Dynasty.

The origin of Idioms

The twelfth chapter of Li Baojia's officialdom in the Qing Dynasty: "as soon as he saw that his family members were much worse than before, he knew that some of them must have fallen into the well to speak ill of him."

Idiom usage

It is used as predicate and attributive.

Examples

If he refuses to go down the well and throw a stone, it is meant to be fairplay. Lin Yutang's the style of inserting Analects: steadiness, swearing and fairplay

Analysis of Idioms

A synonym: drop a stone into a well

Antonym: charity, charity